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Robot Reciprocation of Hugs Increases Both Interacting Times and Self-disclosures

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Abstract

Physical contact like touching and hugging plays an essential role in social bonding between people by encouraging interactions and self-disclosure. However, in a human–robot interaction context, it remains unknown whether physical activity with robots provides such similar effects, even though several positive effects of touch interactions have been unveiled. Therefore, we used a hugging robot that we previously developed and experimentally investigated its physical interactions related to encouraging interactions and self-disclosure with 48 participants. Our results showed that reciprocated hugs increased the interaction times and encouraged more self-disclosure from the hugged participants than those who did not get reciprocated hugs.

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Funding

This work was supported by JST CREST Grant Number JPMJCR18A1, Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interaction Science Laboratory, ATR, 2-2-2 Hikaridai, Kansai Science City, Kyoto, Japan

    Masahiro Shiomi, Aya Nakata & Masayuki Kanbara

  2. Nara Institute of Science and Technology, 8916-5 Takayama-Cho, Ikoma, Nara, 630-0192, Japan

    Aya Nakata & Masayuki Kanbara

  3. Norihiro Hagita Laboratories, ATR, 2-2-2 Hikaridai, Kansai Science City, Kyoto, Japan

    Norihiro Hagita

Authors
  1. Masahiro Shiomi
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  2. Aya Nakata
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  3. Masayuki Kanbara
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  4. Norihiro Hagita
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Correspondence to Masahiro Shiomi.

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This paper is an extended version of a previous work of Shiomi et al. [1] and contains additional references, experiments with a different condition, analysis, and discussions.

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Shiomi, M., Nakata, A., Kanbara, M. et al. Robot Reciprocation of Hugs Increases Both Interacting Times and Self-disclosures. Int J of Soc Robotics 13, 353–361 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-020-00644-x

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