Examining User Preference for Agreeableness in Chatbots

Recent research suggests that deliberately manipulating a chatbot’s personality and matching it to the user’s personality can positively impact the user experience. Yet, little is known about whether this similarity attraction effect also applies to the personality dimension agreeableness. In a lab experiment, 30 participants interacted with three versions of an agreeable chatbot (agreeable, neutral, and disagreeable). Whilst our results corroborate a similarity attraction effect between user agreeableness and their preference for the agreeable chatbot, we did not find a reversed relationship with a disagreeable chatbot. Our findings point to a need for moderate instead of extreme chatbot personalities.