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Humor–Robot Interaction: A Scoping Review of the Literature and Future Directions

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Abstract

Humor is a pervasive feature of everyday social interactions that might be leveraged to improve human–robot interactions (HRI). Our goal is to evaluate how the use of humor can improve HRI and enhance the user’s perception of the robot, as well as to derive implications for future research and development of humorous robots. We conducted a systematic search of 7 digital libraries relevant in the areas of HRI and Psychology for papers that were relevant to our goal. We identified 431 records, published between 2000 and August of 2020, of which 12 matched our eligibility criteria. The included studies reported the results of original empirical research that involved direct or video-mediated interaction of humans and robots. Humor seems to have a positive effect in improving the user’s perception of the robot, as well as the user’s evaluation of the interaction. However, the included studies present a number of limitations in their approaches to robotic humor that need to be surpassed before reaching a final verdict on the value of humor in HRI.

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Notes

  1. For matters of transparency, the authors must disclose that although initially pre-registered as a systematic review, given the low number of publications identified through the search process, this review adopted a more general, scoping nature during the revision process.

  2. One of these publications, reported the results of two studies, which will be reported and considered separately hereinafter to provide more clarity on the results of each one.

  3. Schadenfreude, literally meaning “harm-joy” in the original German, is typically used to describe a type of humor that expresses malicious pleasure derived from other’s misfortune [29].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), CIS-IUL and INESC-ID, Lisbon, Portugal

    Raquel Oliveira

  2. ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) and CIS-IUL, Lisbon, Portugal

    Patrícia Arriaga

  3. INESC-ID (GAIPS), Lisbon, Portugal

    Minja Axelsson

  4. Instituto Superior Técnico-Universidade de Lisboa and INESC-ID, Lisbon, Portugal

    Ana Paiva

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  1. Raquel Oliveira
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This work was supported by national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) (FCTUID/CEC/500 21/2013), through the project AMIGOS (PTDC/EEISII/7174/2014). RO also acknowledges a Ph.D. Grant from FCT with the following reference: PD/BD/150570/2020. The authors are solely responsible for the content of this publication. It does not represent the opinion of the European Commission (EC), and the EC is not responsible for any use that might be made of data appearing therein.

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Oliveira, R., Arriaga, P., Axelsson, M. et al. Humor–Robot Interaction: A Scoping Review of the Literature and Future Directions. Int J of Soc Robotics 13, 1369–1383 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-020-00727-9

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