Effects of Robot Animacy and Emotional Expressions on Perspective-Taking Abilities: A Comparative Study across Age Groups

The global population is inevitably aging due to increased life expectancy and declining birth rates, leading to an amplified demand for innovative social and healthcare services. One promising avenue is the introduction of companion robots. These robots are designed to provide physical assistance a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavioral sciences 2023-08, Vol.13 (9), p.728
Main Authors: Hu, Xucong, Tong, Song
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age groups
aging population
Anthropomorphism
Brain
cognitive empathy
companion robots
Comparative analysis
Design
Emotions
Empathy
facial animacy
Health aspects
Health care industry
Hypotheses
Influence
Older people
Perceptions
Robots
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Summary:The global population is inevitably aging due to increased life expectancy and declining birth rates, leading to an amplified demand for innovative social and healthcare services. One promising avenue is the introduction of companion robots. These robots are designed to provide physical assistance as well as emotional support and companionship, necessitating effective human-robot interaction (HRI). This study explores the role of cognitive empathy within HRI, focusing on the influence of robot facial animacy and emotional expressions on perspective-taking abilities-a key aspect of cognitive empathy-across different age groups. To this end, a director task involving 60 participants (30 young and 30 older adults) with varying degrees of robot facial animacy (0%, 50%, 100%) and emotional expressions (happy, neutral) was conducted. The results revealed that older adults displayed enhanced perspective-taking with higher animacy faces. Interestingly, while happiness on high-animacy faces improved perspective-taking, the same expression on low-animacy faces reduced it. These findings highlight the importance of considering facial animacy and emotional expressions in designing companion robots for older adults to optimize user engagement and acceptance. The study's implications are pertinent to the design and development of socially effective service robots, particularly for the aging population.
ISSN:2076-328X
2076-328X
DOI:10.3390/bs13090728