Listening and Mirroring: The Effects of Verbal Attunement and Behavioral Mimicry on Social and Empathic Perceptions of Embodied AI Agents in VR

In plain English

An embodied AI counsellor in VR either mirrored the user's facial expressions and posture in real time or did not, and either responded with verbal attunement or neutrally, in a 2x2 within-subjects study with 20 participants. Verbal attunement was the most reliable predictor of perceived empathy; behavioural mimicry showed only a marginal relationship with perceived humanness. The sample is small and the mimicry results exploratory, but the direction suggests engineering effort spent on what the agent says buys more perceived empathy than the same effort spent on real-time nonverbal mirroring.