Across the literature, scholars have focused on three overlapping aspects that influence users' perceptions of the social potential of avatars (Novak and Fox, 2018): agency, anthropomorphism, and realism. Following Novak and Fox (2018), researchers must differentiate "perceived agency" (whether or not an entity is perceived to be human), "anthropomorphism" (having human form or behavior), and "realism" (the perception that something could realistically or possibly exist in a non-mediated context). Perceived agency influences people's responses in the interaction regardless of who or what is actually controlling the representation. A meta-analysis of studies comparing agents and avatars (Fox et al., 2015) found that both agency and perceived agency mattered: representations controlled by humans were more persuasive than those controlled by bots, and representations believed to be controlled by humans were more persuasive than those believed to be controlled by bots. Researchers have investigated how anthropomorphic representations influence communicative outcomes and found that more human-like representations are judged more favorably; people consider them more attractive, credible, and competent (Westerman, Tamborini, & Bowman, 2015). Higher levels of anthropomorphism also lead to higher involvement, social presence, and communication satisfaction (Kang & Watt, 2013). Moreover, people communicate more naturally with more anthropomorphic avatars (Heyselaar, Hagoort, & Segaert, 2017). Anthropomorphism is also tied to social influence, as more human-like representations can be more persuasive (Gong, 2008).