Tactile interaction with a robot leads to increased risk-taking

TL;DR

This study investigates how different intensities of tactile interaction with a robot influence human risk-taking, physiological stress, and comfort, revealing that tactile interaction can modulate behavior and emotional responses.

Contribution

It demonstrates that tactile interaction intensity with a robot affects risk-taking behavior and physiological responses, a novel insight into human-robot interaction dynamics.

Findings

Both low and high tactile intensities increase risk-taking.

Low-intensity tactile interaction reduces stress and increases comfort.

High-intensity tactile interaction does not lower stress.

Abstract

Tactile interaction plays a crucial role in interactions between people. Touch can, for example, help people calm down and lower physiological stress responses. Consequently, it is believed that tactile and haptic interaction matter also in human-robot interaction. We study if the intensity of the tactile interaction has an impact on people, and do so by studying whether different intensities of tactile interaction modulate physiological measures and task performance. We use a paradigm in which a small humanoid robot is used to encourage risk-taking behaviour, relying on peer encouragement to take more risks which might lead to a higher pay-off, but potentially also to higher losses. For this, the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) is used as a proxy for the propensity to take risks. We study four conditions, one control condition in which the task is completed without a robot, and three experimental conditions in which a robot is present that encourages risk-taking behaviour with different degrees of tactile interaction. The results show that both low-intensity and high-intensity tactile interaction increase people's risk-taking behaviour. However, low-intensity tactile interaction increases comfort and lowers stress, whereas high-intensity touch does not.