The increasing pressure on healthcare systems calls for innovative solutions, such as social robots. However, healthcare situations often are highly emotional while little is known about how people’s prior emotional state may affect the perception and acceptance of such robots. Following appraisal theories of emotion, the appraisal of coping potential related to one’s emotions was found to be important in acting as mediator between emotional state and perceptions of a robot (Spekman et al. in Comput Hum Behav 85:308–318, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.03.043; in Belief in emotional coping ability affects what you see in a robot, not the emotions as such, Dissertation, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 2018), though this has not yet been tested in relation to actual emotional coping nor in an actual encounter with a robot. Hence, the current study focused on how actual emotional coping influences subsequent robot perceptions in two experiments. In Study 1 (N = 101) and Study 2 (N = 110) participants encountered a real humanoid robot after a manipulation to induce various emotions and coping potential. Manipulations in both studies were effective, yet the results in Study 1 were potentially confounded by a novelty effect of participants’ first encounter with a real robot that talked to them. Therefore, in Study 2, participants interacted briefly with the robot before the actual experiment. Results showed an interaction effect of prior emotions and (manipulated) coping potential on robot perceptions, but not the effects expected based on previous studies. An actual interaction with a robot thus seems to provoke different reactions to the robot, thereby overruling any emotional effects. These findings are discussed in light of the healthcare context in which these social robots might be deployed.

医疗保健系统上越来越大的压力要求采用创新的解决方案，例如社交机器人。但是，医疗保健状况通常令人非常激动，而人们对其先前的情绪状态如何影响这种机器人的感知和接受却知之甚少。根据情感的评估理论，发现与一个人的情感相关的应对潜力的评估对于在情感状态和机器人感知之间起中介作用很重要（Spekman等人在Comput Hum Behav 85：308-318，2018。 ：//doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.03.043;在情感应对能力的信念会影响您在机器人中看到的内容，而不是诸如此类的情感（论文，阿姆斯特丹阿姆斯特丹自由大学大学，2018年），尽管如此尚未针对实际的情绪应对进行过测试，与机器人的实际相遇。因此，当前的研究集中在两个实验中，实际的情绪应对如何影响随后的机器人感知。在研究1（N  = 101）和研究2（N = 110）参与者在进行操纵以诱导各种情绪和应对潜力之后遇到了一个真正的人形机器人。两项研究中的操作都是有效的，但研究1的结果可能会因参与者首次与与他们交谈的真实机器人的首次接触所产生的新颖性效果而混淆。因此，在研究2中，参与者在实际实验之前与机器人进行了简短的互动。结果显示，先前的情绪和（操纵的）应对潜力对机器人知觉的交互作用，但没有根据先前的研究预期的影响。因此，与机器人的实际交互似乎会引起对机器人的不同反应，从而否定任何情感影响。根据可能部署这些社交机器人的医疗保健环境讨论了这些发现。