Biblio

In March 2016, several online news media reported on the inadequate emotional capabilities of interactive virtual assistants. While significant progress has been made in the general intelligence and functionality of virtual agents (VA), the emotional intelligent (EI) VA has yet been thoroughly explored. We examine user's perception of EI of virtual agents through Zara The Supergirl, a virtual agent that conducts question and answering type of conversational testing and counseling online. The results show that overall users perceive an emotion-expressing VA (EEVA) to be more EI than a non-emotion-expressing VA (NEEVA). However, simple affective expression may not be sufficient enough for EEVA to be perceived as fully EI.