Perceived Social Presence of an Automated Agent

What it measures

This scale measures how much a person who interacted with a non-human device (e.g., a service robot or chatbot) believes it behaves like a living, feeling social being rather than a machine. Holthöwer and van Doorn (2023) used it to test whether robots can ease customer embarrassment in service settings.

Response format

7-point scale (strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7))

Scale items

• I can imagine the ___ to be a living creature.
• When interacting with the ___ I felt like I was talking with a real person.
• The ___ seems to have real feelings.
• I felt like the ___ was actually looking at me throughout the conversation.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

The scale was reliable (α = .92; Holthöwer and van Doorn 2023, p. 779) among 703 Prolific participants. Validity was not separately discussed. It is a slight adaptation of an automated social presence measure by Čaić et al. (2019). The blank should be filled with a generic label for the device (e.g., "service provider," chatbot, robot).

Citation

Holthöwer, Jana and Jenny van Doorn (2023), "Robots Do Not Judge: Service Robots Can Alleviate Embarrassment in Service Encounters," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 51 (4), 767-784.

Keywords

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