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5.5 A debate: the application of anthropomorphism to interaction design 155

vate people to carry out the tasks suggested (e.g., learning material, purchasing
goods) more strongly than if they are presented in cold, abstract computer lan-
guage. Being addressed in first person (e.g., "Hello Chris! Nice to see you again.
Welcome back. Now what were we doing last time? Oh yes, exercise 5. Let's start
again.") is much more endearing than being addressed in the impersonal third per-
son ("User 24, commence exercise 5'7, especially for children. It can make them
feel more at ease and reduce their anxiety. Similarly, interacting with screen char-
acters like tutors and wizards can be much pleasanter than interacting with a cold
dialog box or blinking cursor on a blank screen. Typing a question in plain English,
using a search engine like Ask Jeeves (which impersonates the well-known ficti-
tious butler), is more natural and personable than thinking up a set of keywords, as
required by other search engines. At the very least, anthropomorphic interfaces are
a harmless bit of fun.

Arguments against exploiting this behavior

There have been many criticisms of the anthropomorphic approach. Shneiderman
(1998), one of the best known critics, has written at length about the problems of
attributing human qualities to computer systems. His central argument is that an-
thropomorphic interfaces, especially those that use first-person dialog and screen
characters, are downright deceptive. An unpleasant side effect is that they can
make people feel anxious, resulting in them feeling inferior or stupid. A screen
tutor that wags its finger at the user and says, "Now, Chris, that's not right! Try
again. You can do better." is likely to feel more humiliating than a system dialog
box saying, "Incorrect. Try again."
Anthropomorphism can also lead people into a false sense of belief, enticing
them to confide in agents called "software bots" that reside in chatrooms and other
electronic spaces, pretending to be conversant human beings. By far the most com-
mon complaint against computers pretending to have human qualities, however, is
that people find them very annoying and frustrating. Once users discover that the
system cannot really converse like a human or does not possess real human quali-
ties (like having a personality or being sincere), they become quickly disillusioned
and subsequently distrust it. E-commerce sites that pretend to be caring by present-
ing an assortment of virtual assistants, receptionists, and other such helpers are
seen for what they really are-artificial and flaky. Children and adults alike also are
quickly bored and annoyed with applications that are fronted by artificial screen
characters (e.g., tutor wizards) and simply ignore whatever they might suggest.

Evidence for the motion
A number of studies have investigated people's reactions and responses to comput-
ers that have been designed to be more humanlike. A body of work reported by
Reeves and Nass (1996) has identified several benefits of the anthropomorphic ap-
proach. They found that computers that were designed to flatter and praise users
when they did something right had a positive impact on how they felt about them-
selves. For example, an educational program was designed to say, "Your question
makes an interesting and useful distinction. Great job!" after a user had contributed