Opening Up to Social Robots: How Emotions Drive Self-Disclosure Behavior

Laban, G. , Kappas, A., Morrison, V. and Cross, E. S. (2023) Opening Up to Social Robots: How Emotions Drive Self-Disclosure Behavior. In: 2023 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), Busan, Republic of Korea, 28-31 Aug 2023, pp. 1697-1704. (doi: 10.1109/RO-MAN57019.2023.10309551)

Abstract

Self-disclosing to others can benefit emotional well-being, but socio-emotional barriers can limit people’s ability to do so. Self-disclosing towards social robots can help overcome these obstacles as robots lack judgment and can establish rapport. To further understand the influence of affective factors on people’s self-disclosure to social robots, this study examined the relationship between self-disclosure behaviour towards a social robot and people’s emotional states and their perception of the robot’s responses as comforting (i.e., being emphatic). The study included 1160 units of observation collected from 39 participants who conversed with the social robot Pepper (SoftBank Robotics) twice a week for 5 weeks (10 sessions in total), answering three personal questions in each session. Results show that perceiving the robot’s responses as more comforting was positively related to self-disclosure behaviour (in terms of disclosure duration in seconds, and disclosure length in number of words), and negative emotional states, such as lower mood, and higher feelings of loneliness and stress, were associated with higher rates of self-disclosure towards the robot. Additionally, higher rates of introversion significantly predicted higher rates of self-disclosure towards the robot. The study reveals the meaningful influence of affective states on how people behave when talking to social robots, especially when experiencing negative emotions. These findings may have implications for designing and developing social robots in therapeutic contexts.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Additional Information: The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie to ENTWINE, the European Training Network on Informal Care (Grant agreement no. 814072), the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant agreement no. 677270 to EC), and the Leverhulme Trust (PLP-2018-152 to EC).
• Keywords: Social robots Human-robot interaction HRI Longitudinal Well-being Self-Disclosure Social perception Affective Science Affective Computing
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Cross, Professor Emily and Laban, Mr Guy
• Authors: Laban, G., Kappas, A., Morrison, V., and Cross, E. S.
• Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology; Q Science > Q Science (General); Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science; Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Computer software; T Technology > T Technology (General)
• College/School: College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Psychology & Neuroscience
• Research Group: Social Brain in Action
• Copyright Holders: Copyright: © 2023 IEEE
• First Published: First published in 2023 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
306871		The European Training Network on Informal Care	Emily Cross	European Commission (EC)	814072	SPN - Centre for Neuroscience
303930		SOCIAL ROBOTS	Emily Cross	European Research Council (ERC)	677270	SPN - Centre for Neuroscience
304215		Philip Leverhulme Prize - EC	Emily Cross	Leverhulme Trust (LEVERHUL)	PLP-2018-152	SPN - Centre for Neuroscience