The E↵ect of Variations in Emotional Expressiveness on Social Support

There is a growing interest in employing embodied agents to achieve beneficial outcomes for users, such as improving health, or increasing motivation for learning. The goal of our research is to explore how and to what extent embodied agents can provide social support to victims of cyberbullying. To this end, we implemented a proof of concept virtual buddy that uses verbal and nonverbal behavior to comfort users. This paper presents the results of a study into the e↵ect of variations in the virtual buddy’s emotional expressiveness (no emotion, verbal emotion only, nonverbal emotion only, or verbal & nonverbal emotion) on user experience, the e↵ectiveness of the support, and perceived social support. The results show that the virtual buddy is successful at conveying support. However, we found no statistically significant di↵erences between conditions.