Argumentation is More Important than Appearance for Designing Culturally Tailored Virtual Agents

Agents that are tailored to appear and behave as members of a particular culture are more acceptable by and persuasive to members of that culture than agents that are not tailored. We report a study that systematically unpacks two tailoring components-appearance and argumentation-for virtual exercise coaches designed for the Indian and American cultures. Indian participants who interacted with an agent whose argumentation was tailored to their culture were significantly more satisfied with the agent irrespective of the agent's appearance.