Subliminal Priming in Human-Agent Interaction

We investigated interactive agents using subliminal priming - the act of exposing a person to stimuli that they may not consciously notice, but are still processed subliminally in their mind - in an attempt to shape a person's mood and behavior. We present an overview of the psychology of subliminal priming from the perspective of how it applies to human-agent interaction, including a discussion of the potential ethical and practical implications. We further present the results from two exploratory studies (one in-lab, one crowdsourced) that present potential subliminal-priming interfaces. Our results suggest that subliminal priming may impact how participants perceive an agent and how much they enjoy a task, but we failed to find any effect of priming on participant mood or agent persuasiveness. This work aims to raise awareness of the dangers of subliminal methods of priming and contributes to the discussion on the ethics of social agents.