LAUSR

Already in the mid-1960s of the twentieth century, the German-American computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum implemented a program that mimicked a virtual Rogerian psychoanalyst called BEliza^ [1]. Eliza analyzed natural language statements, typed by the user, and then generated a response. The program did not Bunderstand^ the user’s statement in terms of natural language semantics, but inspected it for the presence of keywords and used a rule to transform the keywords into a response. Weizenbaum showed that a digital therapist could be implemented in a computer system that has strong positive emotional effects with relative simple means. Since the appearance of Eliza, both the digital and the medical world have changed radically. Formal languages to control computers have given way to graphical user interfaces that enable the majority of the world’s population to interact with computer systems. The internet and powerful mobile technology continuously unite computers and people all around the globe. Nowadays, computer systems support a wide range of users with complexmental tasks, such as decision-making and simulation of virtual worlds in various domains; they represent social agents that give advice, play games, and even beat human players in Jeopardy, the world’s most prestigious intelligence quiz [2]. In health care, there is a growing awareness that psychology, personalization, and coaching play a crucial rule in prevention and behavior change [3, 4]. Healthy behaviors—such as eating healthy food, performing daily physical activity, reducing stress, and regularly getting enough sleep— all have a positive impact on our health, but changing habits towards healthy behavior is often strenuous for a myriad of reasons. Health promotions, self-help books, and websites try to persuade and support individuals to adopt healthy lifestyles and eschew unhealthy habits. But an important problem is that these channels are targeted at large groups and do not take people’s individual characteristics into account. In parallel with these technological and health care developments, a new field of interaction technology has emerged: based on motivation and behavior models from psychology and social sciences, so-called persuasive technology was introduced to support users in changing attitudes, thinking, and behavior through technology that uses persuasion and social influence [5]. Relatedly, a new terminology in interaction technology was adopted: not only are computer systems user-friendly, they must be cooperative, trustful, and able to build a relationship with users [6, 7]. In other words, emerging technology enables us to implement personalized, cooperative, and empathetic mobile agents (not only artificial social * Robbert Jan Beun [email protected]