Knowledge is power? The impact of agent knowledge on persuasion effectiveness in online interactions with generative social agents

Abstract

Generative social agents (GSAs) have become highly capable of shaping people’s attitudes and behaviors. Regulating which knowledge is available to GSAs may provide a mechanism for guiding persuasive outcomes that align with user goals and values. Following this approach, we investigate the impacts of self-, user-, and context-related agent knowledge on user attitudes and compliance. To this end, an online experiment (N = 113) was conducted that featured screen-based persuasive GSAs with varying knowledge configurations. The experiment involved a resource allocation paradigm that covered three domains: Fitness, nutrition, and investment. As part of the experimental paradigm, the GSA advised participants to change their previously allocated resources. Subsequently, participants had the option to change their resource allocation. Persuasion effectiveness was measured by the amount of resources re-distributed in accordance with the agent’s suggestions. Our results partially support that the availability of domain-specific context-knowledge and user-related knowledge impact agent persuasiveness – mediated by human attitudes towards the agent and its persuasive messages. Available self-knowledge about the agent’s own role and personality did not have a significant impact on persuasion effectiveness. This is likely due to lacking strength of experimental manipulation or insufficient statistical power. Nonetheless, our preliminary findings highlight the need to identify relevant knowledge configurations for GSAs to enable responsible and effective persuasion, which has important implications for the deployment of GSAs in sensitive areas like healthcare and education.