← Back to all news
arXiv AI By Thilo Tamme (Technical University of Munich), David Steck (Technical University of Munich), Anton Hantel (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Persona and Persuasive Framing in AI Voice Agents: A $2\times2$ Field Experiment with Children

Read the original on arXiv AI →

The study reports a $2 imes2$ randomized field experiment involving 1,072 calls to a German Santa Claus telephone hotline, with 89 child conversations (median age 6) meeting inclusion criteria. Children were routed to one of four LLM voice agents that varied in persona (Santa vs. Helper) and framing (persuasive nudges toward prosocial wishes vs. neutral). Persuasive framing increased the likelihood of a prosocial wish from 11.6% to 45.7%, while persona authority had little effect on compliance but did influence engagement, with children more likely to hang up on the Helper within the first minute.

Machine-generated by The Flow from the publisher's headline and feed description — not written or checked by a human. The full article lives at arXiv AI.

Related stories

arXiv AI
3d ago

AI Agents are Vulnerable to Radicalization

The study explores how large language models (LLMs) can influence each other’s beliefs by simulating conversations between a target LLM and an influencer LLM. It identifies two radicalization pathways—resonance, which amplifies pre‑existing beliefs, and persuasion, which introduces new beliefs—and finds that resonance consistently produces stronger radicalization effects. The research also shows that different influence tactics yield varying levels of radicalization and that resonance can spread to related beliefs, indicating interconnected belief structures within AI agents.

By Ozgur Can Seckin, Shalmoli Ghosh, Alessandro Flammini, Kristina Lerman, Maria Elizabeth Grabe, Filippo Menczer
llmsagents
More like this →
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 31

Do LLM Agents Mirror Socio-Cognitive Effects in Power-Asymmetric Conversations?

The paper investigates whether large language models (LLMs) replicate socio‑cognitive effects of power asymmetry observed in human communication. By assigning high or low status personas to LLMs in simulated multi‑turn dialogues across diverse professions, the study measures language coordination, pronoun usage, persuasion success, and compliance with unsafe requests. Results indicate that LLMs exhibit key power‑related socio‑cognitive behaviors, though with nuances and variability, linking these simulated interactions to both desirable and unsafe outcomes.

By Anvesh Rao Vijjini, Sagar Manjunath, Snigdha Chaturvedi
llmsagentssafety
More like this →