Effects of Gender Synchrony in User-Agent Interactions: Integrating the Designer as a Product Cue in Virtual Human Design for Mental Health Support

Designing virtual humans to support mental health scenarios is challenging, as it requires designers to think of characteristics and strategies to promote rapport, increase trust, and favor the agents’ effectiveness during the intended interactions. This paper explores the impact of featuring the designer as a product cue in virtual human interactions, with a particular focus on how gender synchrony among users, virtual humans, and their designers influences trust and intentions towards well-being practices like gratitude journaling. We conducted an online, asynchronous, between-subjects user study and analyzed responses from 159 adult participants from the United States: Participants were female (n=80) or male (n=79). We assessed how gender synchrony could affect users’ intentions and the perceived trustworthiness of the virtual agents. Our findings suggest that gender synchrony does not significantly impact users’ intentions towards gratitude journaling. However, significant differences were observed concerning source credibility linked to agent trustworthiness when there was an age gap of less than ten years between users and virtual humans. These findings underscore the importance of considering both gender and age when designing virtual humans, as these factors can significantly enhance user acceptance and could foster the overall effectiveness of virtual human interactions in sensitive contexts such as mental health. Our study contributes to understanding how demographic characteristics and the use of the designer as a product cue can be strategically adapted to improve user experience in mental health scenarios.