Body types’ effects on perception of virtual agents’ personalities

This paper presents an exploratory study of users' first impressions of personality traits and preference for virtual receptionist agents with different body types and genders.The results show that gender and body type interact, since a female muscular agent was rated high on many traits while a male muscular agent was rated low.Another finding is that even though agents with large bodies were rated higher or as high on important traits, e.g.helpful and knowledgeable, the muscular female agent was still preferred over them.This implies that further research on body types in agent design is needed and may be important to support representation and norm critical design.