Social dilemmas are situations in which the interests of the individuals conflict with those of the team, and in which maximum benefit can be achieved if enough individuals adopt prosocial behavior (i.e. focus on the team’s benefit at their own expense). In a human-agent team, the adoption of prosocial behavior is influenced by various features displayed by the artificial agent, such as transparency, or small talk. One feature still unstudied is expository communication, meaning communication performed with the intent of providing factual information without favoring any party.

We implemented a public goods game called the Pest Control game, in which players must cooperate to slow down the spread of a pest while attempting to gather as much coins as possible.

We used this game to perform a user-study in which participants played the game while receiving feedback from an artificial coach. The participants could receive two types of feedback: problem awareness (= public information about how the game works) or player strategies (= information about the impact of individual or collective actions).