Human-Robot Relationship: long-term effects on disclosure, perception and well-being

Abstract

Since interactions with social robots are novel and exciting for many people, one concern is the extent to which people's behavioural and emotional engagement with robots might develop from initial interactions with a robot, when a robot's novelty is especially salient, and sustained over time. This challenge is particularly noticeable in interactions designed to support people's well-being, with limited evidence for how social robots can support people's emotional health over time. Accordingly, this research is aimed at studying how long-term repeated interactions with a social robot affect people's self-disclosure behaviour toward the robot, perceptions of the robot, and how it affected factors related to well-being. We conducted a mediated long-term online experiment with participants conversing with the social robot Pepper 10 times over 5 weeks. We found that people self-disclose increasingly more to a social robot over time, and found the robot to be more social and competent over time. Participants' moods got better after talking to the robot and across sessions, they found the robot's responses to be more comforting over time, and they also reported feeling less lonely over time. Finally, our results stress that when the discussion theme was supposedly more emotional, participants felt lonelier and stressed. These results set the stage for addressing social robots as conversational partners and provide crucial evidence for their potential introduction as interventions supporting people's emotional health through encouraging self-disclosure.

Coping with Emotional Distress via Self-Disclosure to Robots: Intervention with Caregivers

“…• Due to the negative health outcomes of suppressive coping behaviours (8) and the tendency of informal caregivers to engage in such behaviours (see 101; 83; 104; 105) we would like to study how repeated interactions with a social robot affect informal caregivers' self-disclosure behaviour toward the robot. Following our previous results (48) we expect that informal caregivers will gradually open up and self-disclose increasingly more to the robot over time.…”

“…• To evaluate the feasibility and adaptation of longterm interactions with social robots as potential interventions for coping with emotional distress we will evaluate informal caregivers' social perceptions of the robot (in terms of mind perception (see 144), and friendliness and warmth) and their user experience communicating with the robot over time (in terms of communication competency and interaction quality). Following our previous results (48) we expect that people will gradually perceive the robot as more social and competent over time.…”

“…• To further understand the effectiveness of the intervention, and the extent to which self-disclosure to social robots can positively affect informal caregivers' well-being and reduce emotional distress over time, we will evaluate how the repeated interactions with the social robot effects informal caregivers' emotional well-being in terms of their mood, perceiving the robot's responses as comforting, feelings of loneliness and stress, and subjective perceptions of burden from caregiving. In accordance with (48), we expect the intervention to have a positive effect on informal caregivers' well-being. Moreover, we would also like to assess the intervention's influence on informal caregivers emotion regulation processes.…”

“…We have previously reported the development of the paradigm, the experimental design and procedure, and empirical results from a non informal caregivers sample (48, see a summary of the results in 2.2). Following previous recommendations and statements regarding rigorous human-robot interaction (HRI) research and science (142; 143; 37; 42), here we replicated the former study (48) with a informal caregiving sample to further validate our previous results, and assess the suitability of this paradigm as a potential intervention to support emotional well-being among a population that is highly prone to emotional distress (17). We aimed to test the following aspects and achieve the following objectives:…”

“…We found that people self-disclose increasingly more to a social robot over time, and found the robot to be more social and competent over time. Participants' moods got better after talking to the robot and across sessions, they found the robot's responses to be more comforting over time, and they also reported feeling less lonely over time (48). Another interesting example includes two studies that found that people in bad mood benefited more from disclosing to a robot than participating in writing disclosure using a journal (140) or on social media (141).…”