Affective and social behavior in animated agents

This paper introduces a model of interaction between users and animated agents as well as inter-agent interaction that supports basic features of affective conversation and social interaction. As essential requirements for animated agents' capability to engage in and exhibit affective and social communication we motivate reasoning about emotions and emotion expression, personality, and social role awareness. The main contribution of our paper is the incorporation of 'social filter programs' to mental models of animated agents. Those programs may qualify an agent's expression of its emotional state by the social context, thereby enhancing the agent's believability as a conversational partner. Our implemented system is entirely web-based and demonstrates animated agents with affective and social behavior in a virtual coffee shop environment.