A Dancing Virtual Agent to Evoke Human Emotions

This paper presents an experimental study investigating the impact of dancing IVAs on human emotions. The results showed that watching a dancing IVA depicting different emotions significantly influenced human emotions. Additionally, the participant's anger, sadness and happiness were significantly dependent on which dancing character's emotion they watched. Moreover, the results of the study showed that while most of the participants were able to recognize the emotions depicted by the dancing IVA, correct recognition of the dancing IVAs' emotions was not necessary to have the intended influence on human emotions. These results suggest that some of the benefits associated with dancing, such as dance therapy, could be achieved just by watching an IVA.