# The Effects of Embodiment and Personality Expression on Learning in LLM-based Educational Agents

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.10993 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.10993/

## Key facts

- Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Social simulation and multi-agent debate, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 14 of its 129 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Jun 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Social simulation and multi-agent debate](https://mlsanity.com/agents/social-simulation-and-multi-agent-debate/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Personality Traits in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.00184/) (2023)
- [Chat-3D: Data-efficiently Tuning Large Language Model for Universal Dialogue of 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08769/) (2023)
- [A Comprehensive Review of Data-Driven Co-Speech Gesture Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.05339/) (2023)
- [Speech2AffectiveGestures: Synthesizing Co-Speech Gestures with Generative Adversarial Affective Expression Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.00262/) (2021)
- [Speech Drives Templates: Co-Speech Gesture Synthesis with Learned Templates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08020/) (2021)
- [Estimating the Personality of White-Box Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.12000/) (2022)
- [From LLM to Conversational Agent: A Memory Enhanced Architecture with Fine-Tuning of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02777/) (2024)
- [Investigating Audio, Visual, and Text Fusion Methods for End-to-End Automatic Personality Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.00705/) (2018)
- [Revisiting the Reliability of Psychological Scales on Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19926/) (2023)
- [Story-to-Motion: Synthesizing Infinite and Controllable Character Animation from Long Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07446/) (2023)
- [SGToolkit: An Interactive Gesture Authoring Toolkit for Embodied Conversational Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.04636/) (2021)
- [On the Effectiveness of Creating Conversational Agent Personalities Through Prompting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11182/) (2023)
- [From Words to Worlds: Transforming One-line Prompt into Immersive Multi-modal Digital Stories with Communicative LLM Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10478/) (2024)
- [Personality Perception in Human Videos Altered by Motion Transfer Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14733/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [LLM Agents for Education: Advances and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11733/) (2025)
- [DeceptionBench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for AI Deception Behaviors in Real-world Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15501/) (2025)
- [Mutual Theory of Mind in Human-AI Collaboration: An Empirical Study with LLM-driven AI Agents in a Real-time Shared Workspace Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.08811/) (2024)
- [LMLPA: Language Model Linguistic Personality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17632/) (2024)
- [Humanizing LLMs: A Survey of Psychological Measurements with Tools, Datasets, and Human-Agent Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.00049/) (2025)
- [ELLMA-T: an Embodied LLM-agent for Supporting English Language Learning in Social VR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02406/) (2024)
- [The influence of persona and conversational task on social interactions with a LLM-controlled embodied conversational agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.05653/) (2024)
- [Position: LLMs Can be Good Tutors in English Education](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05467/) (2025)
- [PERSA: Reinforcement Learning for Professor-Style Personalized Feedback with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.01123/) (2026)
- [Teaching According to Students' Aptitude: Personalized Mathematics Tutoring via Persona-, Memory-, and Forgetting-Aware LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.15163/) (2025)
- [Integrating Personality into Digital Humans: A Review of LLM-Driven Approaches for Virtual Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16457/) (2025)
- [Promoting Online Safety by Simulating Unsafe Conversations with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22267/) (2025)
- [When Avatars Have Personality: Effects on Engagement and Communication in Immersive Medical Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.14132/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This work investigates how personality expression and embodiment affect personality perception and learning in educational conversational agents. We extend an existing personality-driven conversational agent framework by integrating LLM-based conversation support tailored to an educational application. We describe a user study built on this system to evaluate two distinct personality styles: high extroversion and agreeableness and low extroversion and agreeableness. For each personality style, we assess three models: (1) a dialogue-only model that conveys personality through dialogue, (2) an animated human model that expresses personality solely through dialogue, and (3) an animated human model that expresses personality through both dialogue and body and facial animations. The results indicate that all models are positively perceived regarding both personality and learning outcomes. Models with high personality traits are perceived as more engaging than those with low personality traits. We provide a comprehensive quantitative and qualitative analysis of perceived personality traits, learning parameters, and user experiences based on participant ratings of the model types and personality styles, as well as users' responses to open-ended questions.