These qualities are best understood as metaphors that give developers a way to talk about and design the capabilities and applications of agents. Although beliefs and intentions are the main metaphors used by agent researchers, they are by no means the only human characteristics we can apply to agents. Emotion is another. Judging from its fundamental role in human interactions, emotion has powerful implications for agent technologies. 1 Anthropoid agents can act whimsically, but that only makes them richer in character, somewhat like the interesting characters you might encounter in a Dickens novel.
Emotion often gets short shrift in our society, and is thought to have no place at all in science.
Despite all the progress in computing, users have been slow to accept the technology. They have often accepted what was thrown at them, but only under economic duress. Bringing the technology closer to their emotional needs might ease this resistance. In computer-human interfaces, especially for education and commerce where a large variety of people must deal with computers, an anthropoid agent might be more inviting. Depending on the situation, the agent might appear shy, friendly, stern, or knowledgeable.