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A Robot that Encourages Self-disclosure by Hug

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Social Robotics (ICSR 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10652))

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Abstract

This paper presents the effects of being hugged by a robot to encourage self-disclosure. Physical interactions, which are known to be essential for communication with others, also show the effects of eliciting self-disclosure from the people with whom one is interacting and contribute to the construction of social relationships. Previous research demonstrated that people who touched a robot experienced positive impressions of it without clarifying whether being hugged by a robot elicits self-disclosure from people. We developed a huge, teddy-bear-like robot that can give reciprocal hugs to people and experimentally investigated its effects on self-disclosure. Our experiment results with 32 participants showed that those who were hugged by the robot significantly offered more self-disclosure than those who were not hugged by it. Moreover, people who were hugged by the robot interacted with it longer than those who were not hugged by it. On the other hand, the perceived feelings about the robot were not significantly different between the conditions.

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Acknowledgements

This research work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP15H05322 and JP16K12505.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ATR-IRC, Kyoto, Japan

    Masahiro Shiomi, Aya Nakata, Masayuki Kanbara & Norihiro Hagita

  2. NAIST, Nara, Japan

    Aya Nakata, Masayuki Kanbara & 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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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Masahiro Shiomi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS-AIST JRL, Tsukuba, Japan

    Abderrahmane Kheddar

  2. CNRS-AIST JRL, Tsukuba, Japan

    Eiichi Yoshida

  3. The National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shuzhi Sam Ge

  4. University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan

    Kenji Suzuki

  5. Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    John-John Cabibihan

  6. CITEC, Bielefeld, Germany

    Friederike Eyssel

  7. Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas, USA

    Hongsheng He

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Shiomi, M., Nakata, A., Kanbara, M., Hagita, N. (2017). A Robot that Encourages Self-disclosure by Hug. In: Kheddar, A., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10652. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70022-9_32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70022-9_32

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-70021-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-70022-9

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