Immersive virtual environments populated by real and virtual humans provide valuable insights into human decision-making processes under controlled conditions. Existing literature indicates elevated comfort, higher presence, and a more positive user experience when virtual humans exhibit rich behaviors. Based on this knowledge, we conducted a web-based, interactive study, in which participants were embodied within a virtual crowd with complex behaviors driven by an underlying psychological model. While participants interacted with a group of autonomous humanoid agents in a shopping scenario similar to Black Friday, the platform recorded their non-verbal behaviors. In this independent-subjects study, we investigated behavioral and emotional variances across participants with diverse backgrounds focusing on two conditions: perceived agency and the crowd’s emotional disposition. For perceived agency, one group of participants was told that the other crowd members were avatars controlled by humans, while another group was told that they were artificial agents. For emotional disposition, the crowd behaved either in a docile or hostile manner. The results suggest that the crowd’s disposition and specific participant traits significantly affected certain emotions and behaviors. For instance, participants collected fewer items and reported a higher increase of negative emotions when placed in a hostile crowd. However, perceived agency did not yield any statistically significant effects.

由真实和虚拟人类组成的沉浸式虚拟环境为受控条件下的人类决策过程提供了宝贵的见解。现有文献表明，当虚拟人表现出丰富的行为时，舒适度更高、临场感更强、用户体验更积极。基于这些知识，我们进行了一项基于网络的交互式研究，其中参与者体现在虚拟人群中，其复杂的行为由潜在的心理模型驱动。当参与者在类似于黑色星期五的购物场景中与一组自主人形代理互动时，该平台记录了他们的非语言行为。在这项独立受试者研究中，我们调查了不同背景的参与者的行为和情绪差异，重点关注两个条件：感知机构和人群的情绪倾向。对于感知代理，一组参与者被告知其他人群成员是由人类控制的化身，而另一组被告知他们是人工智能代理。在情绪倾向上，人群的表现要么温顺，要么敌对。结果表明，人群的性格和特定的参与者特征显着影响某些情绪和行为。例如，参与者收集的物品较少，并且当处于敌对人群中时，他们的负面情绪会增加更多。然而，感知代理并没有产生任何统计上显着的影响。