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Title: Motivating health behavior change with a storytelling virtual agent
We developed a virtual agent that motivates church-going users to change their health behavior by telling existing cultural narratives that have high relevance with the counseling topic in an engaging way. We evaluated this agent in a between-subjects experiment where participants interacted with an agent that counseled them on nutrition either without a story, with a story but told in a neutral speech style, or with a story using dramatic delivery inspired by church sermons. We found that interaction with either one of the storytelling agents leads to a significantly greater change in confidence to engage in the target behavior of healthy eating than interacting with a non-storytelling agent, demonstrating the efficacy of stories in health counseling by virtual agents.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1831755
PAR ID:
10376104
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Editor(s):
Martinho, Carlos; Dias, Joao
Date Published:
Journal Name:
IVA '22: Proceedings of the 22nd ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1-3
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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    We developed a virtual agent that motivates church-going users to change their health behavior by telling existing cultural narratives that have high relevance with the counseling topic in an engaging way. We evaluated this agent in a between-subjects experiment where participants interacted with an agent that counseled them on nutrition either without a story, with a story but told in a neutral speech style, or with a story using dramatic delivery inspired by church sermons. We found that interaction with either one of the storytelling agents leads to a significantly greater change in confidence to engage in the target behavior of healthy eating than interacting with a non-storytelling agent, demonstrating the efficacy of stories in health counseling by virtual agents. 
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  2. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, IVA '20: Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents)
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  4. ; (, International Society of the Learning Sciences)
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