Virtual agents can increase trust in police for people with immigrant backgrounds

“How was it?” In this study, participants were asked to interact with a virtual police officer. Credit: Informatik V / JMU
Can virtual agents strengthen the trust of people with immigrant backgrounds within the police force? A team of researchers from the University of Würzburg investigated this. The results surprised even those in charge.
Intelligent virtual agents can help strengthen the trust of people with migration experience in institutions such as the police. This is the key finding of a new study by scientists at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU). Birgit Lugrin, a professor of computer science, was in charge of the research. She holds the Computer Science V Chair at JMU. So-called social interactive agents are one of her main research areas.
The study is based on the fact that around 24 million people with immigrant backgrounds currently live in Germany. It’s good that they trust the local legal and government systems. Active contact with authorities and therefore with police officers may play an important role in this. According to the Würzburg research team, for example, if a person with Turkish roots meets a police officer from the same background, this could play a particularly important role in strengthening trust in authorities.
Virtual Agent is a cost-effective enhancement
However, the proportion of employees with immigrant backgrounds in German police forces is relatively low. At the same time, police often lack sufficient personnel to carry out public relations activities in addition to their actual duties. Using an “intelligent virtual agent” could potentially solve this problem. For those who can’t imagine what a virtual agent is: they basically resemble computer game characters that move through a virtual world and act like humans.
“Intelligent virtual agents designed to interact with people in a natural and intuitive way can be relatively inexpensive to develop and have the potential to be used at scale,” Lugrin said. Let’s talk about the benefits. They could therefore be a welcome addition to police public relations efforts. Another advantage is that agents can be designed to look and sound very similar to people with immigrant backgrounds.
Interactive interactions in a digital world
Whether a virtual agent with an immigrant background can actually enhance the trust of real people with the same background within the police force: Lugrin and her team investigated this as part of an experimental study. They recently presented their results at the Association for Computing Machinery’s International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents.
“We developed an interactive scenario in which participants interacted with a police officer on a computer. In one case, the virtual agent was able to identify himself as typically German, while in another, The appearance and language of the virtual agents revealed that they were from different cultural backgrounds,” says Lugrin. The subjects themselves all had Turkish roots and lived in Germany.
How empathetic are your digital counterparts?
Before and after the online conference, researchers used questionnaires to record key parameters of participants’ attitudes toward the police. These included aspects such as general trust in the police and the effectiveness of police work. Ratings of the extent to which police officers act fairly and equally when dealing with different groups were also recorded.
Regarding virtual agents, the research team determined how study participants perceived virtual agents. This includes aspects such as similarity, warmth, competence, empathy, and, of course, trust in your digital counterpart.
Trust is growing in every case
Analysis of all this data shows that interacting with a virtual police officer can actually increase trust in the police. However, the research team could not confirm one of their main hypotheses. “We expected that group similarity, i.e. having the same cultural background, would have an even stronger positive impact on trust,” explains Birgit Lugrin. But in the experiment, trust increased regardless of whether study participants encountered a “typical German” agent or an agent with an immigrant background.
However, according to Lugrin, this does not invalidate the theory. “In psychology, numerous studies have shown that people perceive third parties more positively when they are similar to themselves,” the scientist explains. Many factors can influence what constitutes similarity, including religion, political views, and cultural background.
Therefore, Lugrin believes that further research is needed to investigate this aspect in more detail. But overall, the key finding for her remains that “virtual agents are an effective tool for positive personal interaction with authorities.”
More information: Enhancing trust in the police through interaction with virtual agents – An investigation of ingroup effects with mixed-culture individuals. DOI: 10.1145/3652988.3673944. www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2f407 … 647916f7fdf1/sia-bib
Provided by Julius Maximilian University of Wurzburg
Citation: Virtual agents can increase trust in police among people with migration backgrounds (15 October 2024) https://phys.org/news/2024-10-virtual-agents-police- people- Retrieved October 15, 2024 migration.html
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