# Confiding in and Listening to Virtual Agents: The Effect of Personality

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.00746 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.00746/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 2 Nov 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Understand User Opinions of Large Language Models via LLM-Powered In-the-Moment User Experience Interviews](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.15226/) (2025)
- [InterviewBot: Real-Time End-to-End Dialogue System to Interview Students for College Admission](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15049/) (2023)
- [Digital Transformation Chatbot (DTchatbot): Integrating Large Language Model-based Chatbot in Acquiring Digital Transformation Needs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.02842/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present an intelligent virtual interviewer that engages with a user in a text-based conversation and automatically infers the user's psychological traits, such as personality. We investigate how the personality of a virtual interviewer influences a user's behavior from two perspectives: the user's willingness to confide in, and listen to, a virtual interviewer. We have developed two virtual interviewers with distinct personalities and deployed them in a real-world recruiting event. We present findings from completed interviews with 316 actual job applicants. Notably, users are more willing to confide in and listen to a virtual interviewer with a serious, assertive personality. Moreover, users' personality traits, inferred from their chat text, influence their perception of a virtual interviewer, and their willingness to confide in and listen to a virtual interviewer. Finally, we discuss the implications of our work on building hyper-personalized, intelligent agents based on user traits.