# Social Responses to Virtual Humans: The Effect of Human-Like Characteristics
## 2 Experiment #1: Social Facilitation
### Results
#### 2.5.2 Post Hoc Analyses for Each Virtual Human Type
For all three tasks, comparisons show that completion time for both easy and hard tasks was statistically different from the human condition _with the exception of the anagram easy and the modular arithmetic easy_; anagram easy: \(t(34)<1\); anagram hard: \(t(34)=2.25\), \(p<0.05\), \(d=0.07\); maze easy: \(t(34)=2.41\), \(p<0.05\), \(d=0.72\); maze hard: \(t(34)=2.17\), \(p<0.05\), \(d=-0.22\); modular arithmetic easy: \(t(34)<1\); modular arithmetic hard: \(t(34)=2.10\), \(p<0.05\), \(d=-0.51\). _Voice recordings conveying emotion versus human:_ Of interest was whether the social response to a voice recording emotion is similar to the social response to a human. For all three tasks, pairwise comparisons show that completion time for both easy and hard tasks was statistically different from the human condition with _the exception of anagram easy and modular arithmetic easy_; anagram easy: \(t(34)<1\); anagram hard: \(t(34)=2.17\), \(p<0.05\), \(d=0.02\); maze easy: \(t(34)=2.23\), \(p<0.05\), \(d=0.45\); maze hard: \(t(34)=2.41\), \(p<0.05\), \(d=-0.05\); modular arithmetic easy: \(t(34)<1\); modular arithmetic hard: \(t(34)=2.10\), \(p<0.05\), \(d=-0.01\). _Voice synced facial appearance conveying emotion versus human:_ Of interest was whether the social response to a voice synced facial appearance conveying emotion is similar to the social response to a human. For all three tasks, pairwise comparisons show that completion time for both easy and hard tasks was not significantly different from the human condition; anagram easy: \(t(34)<1\); anagram hard: t(34) \(<1\); maze easy: \(t(34)<1\); maze hard: \(t(34)<1\); modular arithmetic easy: \(t(34)<1\); modular arithmetic hard: \(t(34)<1\). In general, the social facilitation experiment showed that as with a human, virtual humans do produce social facilitation. In addition, performance in the presence of voice synced facial appearance and voice synced facial appearance conveying emotion seems to elicit stronger social facilitation (i.e., no statistical difference compared to performance in the presence of voice only or face only. Conveying emotion did not produce this additional effect. The purpose of the second experiment was first, to expand this result to a different social behavior known in the literature as the \"policteness norm\". In the social psychology literature, socially desirable response bias in interview situations has been well documented [87; 88; 89]. One type of social desirability effect occurs when people bias their responses according to the perceived preference of the interviewer. For example, when person A is asked by person B to evaluate person B (direct evaluation), person A generally applies the politeness norm and gives a positive response to avoid offending Person B. On the other hand, if person C were to ask person A to evaluate person B (indirect evaluation), then person A tends to give a more honest (likely more negative) response to Person C.  
Studies by [PERSON] [14; 16] on whether people apply the politeness norm to computers provided some insights in designing the present study. In the present experiment, of interest is whether direct, as opposed to indirect, requests for evaluations of virtual humans elicit more positive responses. In addition, this experiment collected data of people's responses to a human presenter as a basis for comparison. Participants were presented and quizzed either by a human presenter or a virtual human presenter that varied in terms of features. Participants then evaluated the presenter's performance either by responding directly to the presenter or indirectly via a paper and pencil questionnaire.