Theoretical implications Manipulation: bond

The relation people have with each other is important for an appropriate touch (Coan, Schaefer & Davidson, 2006), is this also the case for robot-initiated touch? The first part of this experiment was a one-hour interaction moment between the participant and the robot, to create a bond. Some measurements indicated that participants felt more bonded with the robot, but not all the scales that measured the bond between the robot and the participant indicated an increased bond. It could be the case that the underlying perceptions about a friendship may differ per person, which may affect how

they defined a bond with the robot (Emmeche, 2014). It was not known in advance how the participants defined a friendship, which could affect how the bond with the robot was experienced by the participant. Maybe you should not compare a relationship with a robot with a relationship between two human beings, but rather let it be a unique relationship that meets a basic human need of connection (Beran & Ramirez-Serrano, 2011).

The Attachment Scale, that measured the relation between the robot and the participant, gave no significant result after the interaction. The Attachment Scale consists of specific questions, for example: “the robot had a special meaning for me”. It may be that the participant did feel a certain bond with the robot, but that the robot did not have a special meaning or that the participant did not feel emotionally bonded within in a one-hour interaction. This is also the case in human-human interaction, if you see someone for the first time, you may feel connected but he or she is not immediately special for you. An interaction over a longer period of time is needed to create a constructive relationship between human and robot (Baxter et al., 2011, de Graaf, Allouch and Klamer, 2014).

The Social Presence scale score was significantly higher in the bond condition, this makes sense because the participant in the bond condition interacted with the robot and the control condition only saw a robot who did not talk and interact but only moved its head. The robot showed more social possibilities than in the no bond condition, which led to a higher social presence (Heerink et al., 2008).

A result contrary to my expectations was the extent to which the participants were willing to talk about personal topics, with various levels of intimacy, as an indicator for reciprocal self-disclosure. Contrary to our expectation, participants who did not bond were more willing to talk about intimate topics than participants who had bonded with the robot in advance. When people have to talk about sensitive topics, they are more likely to tell the truth to a computer than to another person (Reeves & Nass, 1998). It could be the case that the participants in the bond condition saw the robot more as a human being (high social presence) and the participants in the no bond condition saw the robot as more machine-like (low social presence). So, people in de bond condition were less willing to talk about intimate topics than the participants who saw the robot more as a machine. The participants in the no bond condition may have felt safer to talk about it.

Evaluation  of  the  robot-­initiated  touch  

This study has been unable to demonstrate that a touch of a robot decreases the subjective and objective arousal level of the participant during the experiment. It could have been that the manner of the robot touch was performed influenced the effectiveness of the touch. After the first interaction with the robot the participant in the bond condition found that the robot had more social abilities (a high Social Presence) than the control condition did. The more social possibilities the robot has, the higher the Social Presence (Heerink et al., 2008). A high Social Presence in the interaction with a robot leads to more fun and greater acceptance of the robot (Heerink et al., 2008). Furthermore, it could have been that the social abilities of the robot during the movie interaction were too limited in motion and/or the interaction

with the participant, and that it influenced the robot-initiated touch. The participant expects that the robot is equally skilful as in the interaction part. If not, it might lead to more negative evaluations towards the robot.

It could be that the touch of the robot did not meet the expectations of the participant who was touched. When a robot touch is not in line with the expectations of a person, this will result in a negative evaluation of the robot (Mori, 1970; MacDorman, 2006; Yohanan & MacLean, 2011) and this could affect the evaluation of the touch (Lee et al., 2006). There could have been participants who did not need a soothing touch, but when, nevertheless, the robot touched the participant it would have been inappropriate and unnatural. It is also possible that the touch is not on the right moment during the movie, the robot is only interacting on the pre-programmed moments, maybe this should be more personalized and the robot has to react more adequate to the participant (for example: respond/anticipate to the emotions of the participant). Perhaps participants think that the robot is not able to feel when a touch is needed. Shrestha et al. (2015) stated that functional touch is more accepted than affective touch, persons did not find robot-initiated contact to be uncomfortable if deemed necessary. Hence, a touch could be only effective when it is deemed necessary. Also, Chen et al. (2014) concluded that the participants’ response was significantly more favourable with instrumental touch rather than affective touch. In this study, the touch could be seen as affective touch, and therefore less effective when it was an instrumental touch. Also, the perceived intent of the robot is important and could influence people’s responses. So, it could be that on forehand the participant did not know the intent of the robot and that this influenced the effect of the robot-initiated touch (Chen et al. 2014). Maybe the participant should know beforehand that it is a soothing touch instead of an occasional a touch. With this the affective touch could be more appropriate.

Maybe the manner of touch is not effective and it will be better to have a more continuous touch by holding the robot’s hand (Itoh et al., 2006). You could say that you have to change interaction between the participant and the robot, and make it for example a human-initiated touch (the human touches the robot) instead of a robot-initiated touch. To put the robot on the lap of the participant, then the robot touches the participant without conducting the touch, which was often stiff during the experiment. Furthermore, the closer the robot is and more active, the more important are the non-verbal signals. When this is correct, this creates a positive effect on the evaluation of the robot by the participant (Nakata, Sato & Mori, 1998). In this study, the robot was very close to the participant and it could be that the non-verbal signals were not correct (too minimal or too overdone) to the participant and give not the desired effect.

If the participant does not have created a bond with the robot, their expectations of the robot may be lower of the robot touch. This could affect the experience of the robot touch, when it is not in line with the expectations of the participant. It could be that participants with a bond already have a much higher expectation of the touch, which the robot cannot meet. Participants were more positive after the interaction part than after the movie part, maybe the robot could not meet the expectations of

the participant. Hoffman (2017) stated that the acceptance of robot will increase when people became more familiar to humans. When people become more and more familiar with robots in the future, it might have a positive effect on the human experience regarding robot touch.

One of the few expected positive effects was the attitude of the participant towards the robot (NARS questionnaire). After the experiment, participants in the bond condition were less negative about the robot than the participants in the control condition. Chen et al. (2014) and Cramer et al. (2009) demonstrated that negative attitudes towards robots affect opinions towards robot touch. There was a main-effect for the independent variable bond on the subscales negative attitude toward Situations in Interactions with the Robot (subscale 1) and toward Emotions in Interaction with Robots (subscale 2). Participants in the bond condition were more positive at the end of the experiment than the participants in the no-bond condition. It could have been the case that the participants in the bond condition were more familiar with the robot and knew more about the abilities of the robot, instead of the participants who knew less about the robot because they did not interact with the robot. Bartneck, Nomura, Kanda, Suzuki and Kato (2005) stated that persons who previously interacted with the robot were more positive about the robot. Hoffmann (2017) stated that negative attitudes towards interactive situations with robots (subscale 1) predicted the acceptance of functional and affective human-initiated touch and negative attitudes towards emotions when interacting with robots (subscale 3) predicted the acceptance of affective touch initiated by a robot. So, participants who were more positive on subscale 3 could have been more acceptant of an affective robot-initiated touch. Wullenkord, Fraune and Eyssel (2016) investigated this effect of a robot touch on the attitudes towards robots. Results showed that robot touch effectively reduced negative emotions. But in this study, there was no effect of touch, and the bond with the robot reduced the negative emotions toward the robot.