Vibe Check: Understanding the Effects of LLM-Based Conversational Agents' Personality and Alignment on User Perceptions in Goal-Oriented Tasks

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Hauptverfasser: Rahman, Hasibur, Desai, Smit
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Rahman, Hasibur
Desai, Smit
author_facet Rahman, Hasibur
Desai, Smit
contents Large language models (LLMs) enable conversational agents (CAs) to express distinctive personalities, raising new questions about how such designs shape user perceptions. This study investigates how personality expression levels and user-agent personality alignment influence perceptions in goal-oriented tasks. In a between-subjects experiment (N=150), participants completed travel planning with CAs exhibiting low, medium, or high expression across the Big Five traits, controlled via our novel Trait Modulation Keys framework. Results revealed an inverted-U relationship: medium expression produced the most positive evaluations across Intelligence, Enjoyment, Anthropomorphism, Intention to Adopt, Trust, and Likeability, significantly outperforming both extremes. Personality alignment further enhanced outcomes, with Extraversion and Emotional Stability emerging as the most influential traits. Cluster analysis identified three distinct compatibility profiles, with "Well-Aligned" users reporting substantially positive perceptions. These findings demonstrate that personality expression and strategic trait alignment constitute optimal design targets for CA personality, offering design implications as LLM-based CAs become increasingly prevalent.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_09870
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Vibe Check: Understanding the Effects of LLM-Based Conversational Agents' Personality and Alignment on User Perceptions in Goal-Oriented Tasks
Rahman, Hasibur
Desai, Smit
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Large language models (LLMs) enable conversational agents (CAs) to express distinctive personalities, raising new questions about how such designs shape user perceptions. This study investigates how personality expression levels and user-agent personality alignment influence perceptions in goal-oriented tasks. In a between-subjects experiment (N=150), participants completed travel planning with CAs exhibiting low, medium, or high expression across the Big Five traits, controlled via our novel Trait Modulation Keys framework. Results revealed an inverted-U relationship: medium expression produced the most positive evaluations across Intelligence, Enjoyment, Anthropomorphism, Intention to Adopt, Trust, and Likeability, significantly outperforming both extremes. Personality alignment further enhanced outcomes, with Extraversion and Emotional Stability emerging as the most influential traits. Cluster analysis identified three distinct compatibility profiles, with "Well-Aligned" users reporting substantially positive perceptions. These findings demonstrate that personality expression and strategic trait alignment constitute optimal design targets for CA personality, offering design implications as LLM-based CAs become increasingly prevalent.
title Vibe Check: Understanding the Effects of LLM-Based Conversational Agents' Personality and Alignment on User Perceptions in Goal-Oriented Tasks
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09870