• Journal of the HCI Society of Korea
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.35-42
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• 2006

The importance of interface agent as user interface increases in the ubiquitous computing environment. It is essential that an interface agent can develop social relationship with users. We propose that self-disclosure, a major factor to form and maintain human relationship, can be useful to achieve this goal. This study examined the effects of the degree of a computer agent's self-disclosure on the users' social responses. The experiment was conducted in a 2(intimacy of agent's disclosure: high vs. low) by 2(amount of agent's disclosure: high vs. low) between-group design. The results show that: 1) reciprocity of self-disclosure was found in both sub-dimensions (intimacy and amount) of self-disclosure; 2) in case that participants received highly intimate self-disclosure from the agent, social attraction, trustworthiness and expectation of mutual influence toward agent were lower than when the agent's disclosure was less intimate. These findings suggest that the intimacy of agent's self-disclosure can affect on gathering user information and human-agent relationship formation separately. While agent's highly intimate disclosure can be useful to gather user information, agent's appropriate disclosure can be useful to form positive user-agent relationship.