The role of personality in relationship closeness, developer assistance, and career success

Exploring user experience and performance of a tedious task through human-agent relationship

Positive human-agent relationships can effectively improve human experience and performance in human-machine systems or environments. The characteristics of agents that enhance this relationship have garnered attention in human-agent or human-robot interactions. In this study, based on the rule of the persona effect, we study the effect of an agent's social cues on human-agent relationships and human performance. We constructed a tedious task in an immersive virtual environment, designing virtual partners with varying levels of human likeness and responsiveness. Human likeness encompassed appearance, sound, and behavior, while responsiveness referred to the way agents responded to humans. Based on the constructed environment, we present two studies to explore the effects of an agent's human likeness and responsiveness to agents on participants' performance and perception of human-agent relationships during the task. The results indicate that when participants work with an agent, its responsiveness attracts attention and induces positive feelings. Agents with responsiveness and appropriate social response strategies have a significant positive effect on human-agent relationships. These results shed some light on how to design virtual agents to improve user experience and performance in human-agent interactions.

Extraversion as a Moderator of the Efficacy of Self-Esteem Maintenance Strategies

Four experiments explored how extraversion's connection with self-esteem may depend on specific self-enhancement strategies. Participants' self-esteem threatening feedback indicating that they had performed poorly on a vocabulary or emotional intelligence test. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 80) were randomly assigned to either a control condition (no self-enhancement) or a downward social comparison condition. The procedures for Experiments 2 (N = 470) and 3 (N = 514) were similar, adding a self-serving attribution condition (Experiments 2 and 3) and Basking-in-Reflected-Glory (BIRG) condition (Experiment 3). Across the experiments, extraversion was more related to self-esteem under downward social comparison versus other conditions. BIRGing produced higher self-esteem in Experiment 3 across extraversion levels. Experiment 4 (N = 355) focused on downward social comparison versus control, and provided evidence that an increased perception of being similar to the comparison targets may partially explain extraversion's self-esteem link. Theoretical implications concerning both extraversion and self-enhancement are discussed.

Measuring university-to-work success: development of a new scale

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to develop a subjective multidimensional measure of early career success during university-to-work transition.

Design/methodology/approach

– The construct of university-to-work success (UWS) was defined in terms of intrinsic and extrinsic career outcomes, and a three-stage study was conducted to create a new scale.

Findings

– A preliminary set of items was developed and tested by judges. Results showed the items had good content validity. Factor analyses indicated a four-factor structure and a second-order model with subscales to assess: career insertion and satisfaction, confidence in career future, income and financial independence, and adaptation to work. Third, the authors sought to confirm the hypothesized model examining the comparative fit of the scale and two alternative models. Results showed that fits for both the first- and second-order models were acceptable.

Research limitations/implications

– The proposed model has sound psychometric qualities, although the validated version of the scale was not able to incorporate all constructs envisaged by the initial theoretical model. Results indicated some direction for further refinement.

Practical implications

– The scale could be used as a tool for self-assessment or as an outcome measure to assess the efficacy of university-to-work programs in applied settings.

Originality/value

– This study provides a useful single measure to assess early career success during the university-to-work transition, and might facilitate testing of causal models which could help identify factors relevant for successful transition.