Pedagogical Agent Emotional Design: The Effects of Emotional Cues and Model-Observer Similarity on Female Learners

With growing recognition of the critical role of emotions, pedagogical agent (PA) emotional design has become an increasingly important research topic. In the realm of PA emotional design, investigating the effects of PA emotional cues on specific gender groups and exploring relevant moderating factors are crucial. This study investigated the effects of a PA’s positive emotional cues on female learners’ learning process experiences and outcomes compared to negative emotional cues. It also explored whether the similarity in clothing and grooming styles between female learners and PAs moderated these effects. This study employed a 2 (positive and negative emotional cues) × 2 (high and low similarity) between-subjects experimental design, with 128 female undergraduates randomly assigned to one group. The results indicated that a PA displaying positive emotional cues was perceived as having higher positive and lower negative emotions and being more likely to facilitate learning, more credible, and more engaging than a PA displaying negative cues. Female learners in the positive emotional cue condition showed higher positive emotions and motivation and lower negative emotions and extraneous cognitive load, with no significant differences in learning outcomes compared with those in the negative cue condition. Moreover, the results identified the boundary conditions of the moderating effect of the similarity in clothing and grooming styles between female learners and PAs. The similarity in clothing and grooming styles generally did not moderate these effects. An exception emerged under high similarity, where a PA displaying positive emotional cues was perceived as more human-like than one displaying negative emotional cues.