Enhancing Social Believability of Virtual Agents using Social Power Dynamics

Social Power, a pervasive feature in our daily life, has been proved to have a significant impact on Social Interaction; While the capability of maintaining a Social Interaction has an acknowledged role in Believability of Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs). In this paper, we argue that an ability of reasoning and planning in the presence of Social Power enhances Social Believability of IVAs, leading to more rational interactions. With this aim, we focus on theoretical issues of agent modeling aiming at increasing intelligence and therefore believability of NPCs or agents of game-like simulations or serious games. Thereby, we propose a model of social power inspired by a recently proposed model, SAPIENT, based on a well-known theory of Social Power proposed by French and Raven.