Effects of Social Touch from an Agent in Virtual Space: Comparing Visual Stimuli and Virtual-Tactile Stimuli

Although social touch in physical space has been scrutinized for its positive effects on people, the effects of social touch in virtual space has been neglected. In virtual space, two types of social touch can be designed, a touch with only visual stimuli and a touch with both visual and tactile stimuli. This paper investigates the effects of the two types of agent’s social touch on users in the context where the agent praises their performance of a task in virtual space. Based on past studies of social touch, we hypothesized that the two types of agent’s social touch in virtual space would improve the user’s task motivation, task performance, and the agent’s likability. We experimentally tested our hypotheses by comparing those variables among no-touch, visual-touch, and visual-tactile touch groups. Since our results showed no significant differences among these groups, our hypotheses were not supported. However, a post-hoc analysis by gender suggests that the agent’s social touch with both visual and tactile stimuli while praising male users increased their task motivation in virtual space. This result suggests that the effects of an agent’s social touch in virtual space may be different due to genders, and shows a possibility of positive effects for the touch behavior design of the agent in virtual space.