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seeking information from people, documents, and virtual agents
Trust in information sources
The notion of trust has been virtually absent from most work on how people assess and choose their information sources. Based on two empirical cases this study shows that software engineers and users of e-commerce websites devote a lot of attention to considerations about the trustworthiness of their sources, which include people, documents, and virtual agents. In the project-based software engineering environment trust tends to be a collaborative issue and the studied software engineers normally know their sources first-hand or have them recommended by colleagues. Outside this network people are cautious and alert to even feeble cues about source trustworthiness. For example, users of e-commerce websites—generally perceived as single-user environments—react rather strongly to the visual appearance of virtual agents, though this is clearly a surface attribute. Across the two cases people need access to their sources in ways that enable them to assess source trustworthiness, access alone is not enough.
| Download Paper | |
| Full Title | Trust in information sources: seeking information from people, documents, and virtual agents |
| Year | 2002 |
| Language | English |
| Journal |
Interacting with Computers: The interdisciplinary journal of Human-Computer Interaction
2002, number 5, volume 14 |
| DOI Code | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0953-5438(02) |
| Keywords | Trust, Information-seeking behaviour, Information sources, Personified virtual agents, usability criteria, |
| Synonym | Virtual Agent |
| This paper considers virtual agents, as a new information source. It poses the question of what do users require in order for them to seek information from virtual agents. It considers factors from the literature that influence users to use or adopt an information system or source. The authors discuss that within the context of the Web, many queries can now be answered through web search, thereby providing a potential opportunity for virtual agents to assist users in finding or becoming aware of needed information especially in cases when the information is needed quickly and on a timely basis. The authors analyse finding from an experiment that found that participants were reluctant to trust and share personal information with virtual agents that would allow the agents to better serve them and guide them based on personal preferences. The authors reasoned that participants are concerned about giving out personal information online, which impacted on their perception of virtual e-commerce agents. They also conclude that users need transparency about how submitted information is used and about the ownership of the site plus contact information about the owner. Such information is what ‘anchors the virtual agent in the real world’. The authors also found that passive neutral mediators were perceived as more trustworthy as these agents permitted users to remain in charge, only acting if summoned. This according to the authors provides little room for the agent being proactive and making suggestion to assist user to better formulate or articulate their queries about what they want from the website. Participants also required some recommendation from a third party in order to influence their trust of the web source. The authors interpret that virtual agents need to introduce themselves, the roles they assume in helping uses and explain their communication abilities and limitations. The authors also discovered that participants used keywords for interaction with agents rather than natural language full sentences and observed that participants were surprised that agents responded and communicated in sentences. In considering visual appearance of the agents as impacting people’s perception and use of agents, the authors experimented using a number of visual appearances for agents to test which appeared more trustworthy. They found that participants had a dislike for talking heads and perceived these as weird, artificial and silly. Participants also expressed disapproval for animated characters. Participants also reported finding a text box alone to be dull, impersonal and trivial. From the overall study, the authors conclude that people and documents have been established information sources, but virtual agents are just emerging. As such people have not had sufficient time assess or use these sources in order to from opinions and assessment of their trustworthiness. The authors therefore propose that virtual agents must be accessible in ways that enable information seekers to assess their trustworthiness. In addition, the authors note that people like to get perceptions about information sources in order to form their opinion about the source. In the absence of such information, participants would have to evaluate and assess the source firsthand for trustworthiness, based on inspection of surface attributes and on general assumptions and stereotypes. In this case there were stereotypes about giving personal information on the web. The authors also conclude that since virtual agents encountered by persons who will judge them based on a few moments of interaction visual attributes and appearance will be important, but access to information such as code of ethics, contact details would be more useful. Third party assessment of the quality of the agent will also be important. Users would need information to support their assessment and perceptions about the trustworthiness of agents. The authors also theorise from the findings that a major threat to trustworthiness of an information source is unfamiliarity to the user. Difficulty in getting information about a source also increases distrust. They argue that information seekers generally depend on people to recommend what documents are to be consulted or used. Sometimes participants may look to documents to find people sources to contact. Virtual agents present the opportunity to provide referral services to people or documents or even to other virtual agents. Virtual agents could be implemented as a system for finding people. However, the value of an information source is not that it simply provides information but also assists the information seeker in assessing the trustworthiness of other sources. Agents would, in this regard, need to not only be able to point to sources, but to warn against other sources. |
| Thanks for this extensive review Mark-Shane!!!! This is what we REALLY need in this industry!! As Chatbots.org lead you make me realize we should push these kind of quality reviews to our home page. Working on ideas for a new home page.... Keep you posted Mark-Shane! |
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