Enhancing Trust towards the Police through Interaction with Virtual Agents - Investigating the Ingroup Effect with Mixed-Cultural Individuals

Positive contact with authorities can be an important pillar for our society, as it fosters trust and confidence in the legal and governmental systems, helping maintain social order and cooperation. Hence, for instance, the police engages in public relations efforts. However, due to staff shortages, this is only possible to a limited extent. Additionally, the representation of individuals with immigrant backgrounds within the police force is low. Nevertheless, for individuals with immigrant backgrounds, the ingroup effect can be particularly beneficial in facilitating pleasant personal interactions. To investigate the potential positive effect of a pleasant interaction with the police, and the impact of cultural similarity, on the perceived trust in the police, we implemented an interactive scenario containing either a prototypical German police officer, or one with a mixed-cultural background. In a user study with individuals of the same mixed-cultural background, we measured the trust in the police before and after the interaction. In addition, we assessed the perception of the agent in terms of similarity, warmth, competence, empathy, trust towards the agent, as well as the interaction with the agent in general. Our results reveal, that through interaction with a virtual police officer, indeed the trust in the police could be increased. However, we did not find the intended effect of ingroup similarity, showing no increased trust in the mixed-cultural condition compared to the German condition. We consider these results promising in regards to effectively being able to use virtual agents as a tool to provide positive personal interactions with authorities.