External manifestations of trustworthiness in the interface
Justine Cassell, Timothy Bickmore · Communications of the ACM · 2000
The article is about the kind of trust normally demonstrated in face-to-face human interaction, along with approaches to and benefits from having computer interfaces employ these same manifestations of trustworthiness. It argues that interaction rituals among humans, including greetings small talk, and conventional leave-takings along with their manifestations in speech and in embodied conversational behaviors, can lead users to judge the technology as more reliable, competent and knowledgeable, that is, to trust the technology more. Some degree of trust is required to engage in cooperative behavior. Conversation, in particular, requires cooperation and mutual trust to function smoothly. Trust may be established using the same myriad social cues people use in face-to-face conversation, including interaction rituals, such as small talk, to incrementally build evidence of the embodied conversational agents goodwill and credibility.