From Emotions to Interpersonal Stances: Multi-level Analysis of Smiling Virtual Characters

In this paper, we explore the emotions and interpersonal stances that the expressions of smile may convey by analyzing the user´s perception of smiling embodied conversational agents at different levels: (1) a signal level considering the emotions and stances that a signal of smile may convey depending on its morphological and dynamic characteristics, (2) a communicative level by exploring the effects of the ECA´s smiling behavior on the stances perceived by a user, and (3) an interactive level by showing the influence of the alignment of smiles in a dyad of virtual characters on the perceived stances. In the light of this multi-level analysis of smiles, we propose the architecture of a fully interactive smiling ECA based on an extension of the SAIBA framework.