Tactile interaction with social robots influences attitudes and behaviour

TL;DR

This research investigates how tactile interaction with social robots influences stress, trust, and risk-taking behavior, revealing that social tactile contact can reduce stress and increase risk-taking, with effects dependent on touch intensity.

Contribution

The study demonstrates that social tactile interaction with robots affects stress and risk behavior, distinguishing social touch effects from mere physical contact through comparative experiments.

Findings

Affective touch with robots increases risk-taking behavior.

Gentle touch reduces stress and enhances comfort.

Social nature of tactile interaction influences psychological responses.

Abstract

Tactile interaction plays an essential role in human-to-human interaction. People gain comfort and support from tactile interactions with others and touch is an important predictor for trust. While touch has been explored as a communicative modality in HCI and HRI, we here report on two studies in which touching a social robot is used to regulate people's stress levels and consequently their actions. In the first study, we look at whether different intensities of tactile interaction result in a physiological response related to stress, and whether the interaction impacts risk-taking behaviour and trust. We let 38 participants complete a Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), a computer-based game that serves as a proxy for risk-taking behaviour. In our study, participants are supported by a robot during the BART task. The robot builds trust and encourages participants to take more risk. The results show that affective tactile interaction with the robot increases participants' risk-taking behaviour, but gentle affective tactile interaction increases comfort and lowers stress whereas high-intensity touch does not. We also find that male participants exhibit more risk-taking behaviour than females while being less stressed. Based on this experiment, a second study is used to ascertain whether these effects are caused by the social nature of tactile interaction or by the physical interaction alone. For this, instead of a social robot, participants now have a tactile interaction with a non-social device. The non-social interaction does not result in any effect, leading us to conclude that tactile interaction with humanoid robots is a social phenomenon rather than a mere physical phenomenon.