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arXiv · 2503.04692

The Influence of Prior Discourse on Conversational Agent-Driven Decision-Making

Stephen Pilli·Vivek Nallur
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Abstract

Persuasion through conversation has been the focus of much research. Nudging is a popular strategy to influence decision-making in physical and digital settings. However, conversational agents employing "nudging" have not received significant attention. We explore the manifestation of cognitive biases-the underlying psychological mechanisms of nudging-and investigate how the complexity of prior dialogue tasks impacts decision-making facilitated by conversational agents. Our research used a between-group experimental design, involving 756 participants randomly assigned to either a simple or complex task before encountering a decision-making scenario. Three scenarios were adapted from Samuelson's classic experiments on status-quo bias, the underlying mechanism of default nudges. Our results aligned with previous studies in two out of three simple-task scenarios. Increasing task complexity consistently shifted effect-sizes toward our hypothesis, though bias was significant in only one case. These findings inform conversational nudging strategies and highlight inherent biases relevant to behavioural economics.

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Stephen Pilli, Vivek Nallur. 2025-03-06. The Influence of Prior Discourse on Conversational Agent-Driven Decision-Making. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.04692

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