Proceedings of the Society for Consumer Psychology 2004 Winter Conference

The main purpose of the study is to shed light on the effects of the anthropomorphized recommendation agent on the two core processes of online consumer behavior: persuasion and attribution of responsibility. Anthropomorphism is manipulated via the presence versus absence of social cues (e.g, thumbnail photo and personal nouns) in the electronic recommendation agent’s interface. Results of our experiment indicate that the addition of social cues augmented the inclination of consumers to claim more credits for themselves in the face of positive outcomes; the general pattern of results also suggests that the addition of social cues compels the consumers to blame the agent more harshly in the face of negative outcomes. This is of interesting implication for the design of effective electronic agents, i.e., integrating more anthropomorphizing features into the electronic agent may backfire by triggering stronger selfserving bias in the consumers. On the basis of extant literature on social presence and nonverbal communication, we expected to find the anthropomorphized agent to be more persuasive. However, our data suggests the opposite trend: The addition of social cues did not enhance persuasiveness but rather tend to undermine persuasion. Further research can be conducted to identify conditions under which anthropomorphism is detrimental or beneficial for persuasion. For further information contact: Yang Dai, 110 Westwood Plaza, Suite B401, Los Angeles, CA 90066. Email: [email protected]