Can we assign attitudes to a computer based on its beeps? Toward an effective method for making humans empathize with artificial agents

Can we assign attitudes to a computer based on its beeps? If so, which kinds of beeps are perceived as specific attitudes, such as " disagreement " , " hesitation " or " agreement " ? To examine this issue, I carried out an experiment to observe how participants perceive or assign an attitude to a computer according to beeps of different durations and F0 con-tour's slopes. The results revealed that 1) beeps with increasing intonation regardless of duration were perceived by participants as " disagreement " , 2) flat sounds with longer duration were interpreted as " hesitation " , and 3) decreasing intonations with shorter duration were as " agreement. "