What if Virtual Agents Had Scents? Users' Judgments of Virtual Agent Personality and Appeals in Encounters

2025-09-14

AI Summary

This study investigates how olfactory cues interact with virtual agents’ emotional expressions and gender to shape users’ perceptions of personality and attractiveness. Method: Employing a VR environment integrated with context-aware olfactometry, nonverbal behavior modeling, and standardized perceptual assessments, we conducted the first systematic causal investigation into multisensory (particularly olfactory–visual) integration in person impression formation. Contribution/Results: Olfaction exerts a dominant modulatory effect: pleasant odors significantly amplify likability conferred by positive emotional expressions, whereas unpleasant odors uniformly suppress positive evaluations—regardless of agent gender or facial expression—and can even override visual emotional cues. These findings demonstrate olfactory precedence in cross-modal perception, revealing that odor modulates social evaluation more robustly than visual affective signals. The study provides theoretical grounding and empirical evidence for designing multisensory interactive virtual agents in VR-based social applications.

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction
• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Preferences

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions

Abstract

Incorporating multi-sensory cues into Virtual Reality (VR) can significantly enhance user experiences, mirroring the multi-sensory interactions we encounter in the real-world. Olfaction plays a crucial role in shaping impressions when engaging with others. This study examines how non-verbal cues from virtual agents-specifically olfactory cues, emotional expressions, and gender-influence user perceptions during encounters with virtual agents. Our findings indicate that in unscented, woodsy, and floral scent conditions, participants primarily relied on visually observable cues to form their impressions of virtual agents. Positive emotional expressions, conveyed through facial expressions and gestures, contributed to more favorable impressions, with this effect being stronger for the female agent than the male agent. However, in the unpleasant scent condition, participants consistently formed negative impressions, which overpowered the influence of emotional expressions and gender, suggesting that aversive olfactory stimuli can detrimentally impact user perceptions. Our results emphasize the importance of carefully selecting olfactory stimuli when designing immersive and engaging VR interactions. Finally, we present our findings and outline future research directions for effectively integrating olfactory cues into virtual agents.

Problem

• Investigating how olfactory cues affect virtual agent personality perception
• Examining scent interaction with emotional expressions and gender cues
• Determining optimal scent selection for positive VR user experiences

Innovation

• Incorporating olfactory cues in VR
• Using scents to influence user perceptions
• Integrating multi-sensory virtual agent interactions