Computers are social actors

Clifford Nass, Jonathan Steuer and Ellen R. Tauber
1994 · CHI · Peer-reviewed conference paper

People can apply social rules to computers without consciously believing that the computer is human.

What it contributes

Five experiments investigate social responses to computers, helping establish the Computers Are Social Actors research paradigm. Social behaviour toward an interface need not depend on mistaking it for a person.

Read with care

These experiments used the interfaces and settings of their time. They do not establish how every user will respond to an LLM companion, or whether a particular relationship will be beneficial.

Why it belongs here

A foundation for questioning what a voice, a name, praise or apparent reciprocity invites a user to feel and do.