At Carnegie Mellon University, Rachel Gockley, a graduate student, found that in certain circumstances people spent more time interacting with a robotic receptionist--a disembodied face on a monitor--when the face looked and sounded unhappy. And at Stanford, Clifford Nass, a professor of communication, found that in a simulation, drivers in a bad mood had far fewer accidents when they were listening to a subdued voice making comments about the drive.

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