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Empathy and Its Modulation in a Virtual Human

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 8077))

Abstract

Endowing artificial agents with the ability to empathize is believed to enhance their social behavior and to make them more likable, trustworthy, and caring. Neuropsychological findings substantiate that empathy occurs to different degrees depending on several factors including, among others, a person’s mood, personality, and social relationships with others. Although there is increasing interest in endowing artificial agents with affect, personality, and the ability to build social relationships, little attention has been devoted to the role of such factors in influencing their empathic behavior. In this paper, we present a computational model of empathy which allows a virtual human to exhibit different degrees of empathy. The presented model is based on psychological models of empathy and is applied and evaluated in the context of a conversational agent scenario.

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Boukricha, H., Wachsmuth, I., Carminati, M.N., Knoeferle, P. (2013). Empathy and Its Modulation in a Virtual Human. In: Timm, I.J., Thimm, M. (eds) KI 2013: Advances in Artificial Intelligence. KI 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8077. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40942-4_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40942-4_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-40941-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-40942-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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