Abstract

Profit-oriented service sectors such as tourism, hospitality, and entertainment are increasingly looking at how professional service robots can be integrated into the workplace to perform socio-cognitive tasks that were previously reserved for humans. This is a work in which social and labor sciences recognize the principle role of emotions. However, the models and narratives of emotions that drive research, design, and deployment of service robots in human–robot interaction differ considerably from how emotions are framed in the sociology of labor and feminist studies of service work. In this paper, we explore these tensions through the concepts of affective and emotional labor, and outline key insights these concepts offer for the design and evaluation of professional service robots. Taken together, an emphasis on interactionist approaches to emotions and on the demands of affective labor, leads us to argue that service employees are under-represented in existing studies in human–robot interaction. To address this, we outline how participatory design and value-sensitive design approaches can be applied as complimentary methodological frameworks that include service employees as vital stakeholders.

Highlights

  • There is a gap between social sciences’ discourse concerning emotions at work and how emotions have been addressed by social robotics and human–robot interaction (HRI) communities

  • In today’s human–robot configurations, this gap is as obvious, and ways to address it remain elusive. This paper explores this difference, To do so, we (1) discuss the limitations of the current approaches to emotion for professional service robots; (2) introduce the sociology of labor perspective on emotions in service industries to HRI community; (3) provide some suggestions about how insights from sociology of labor could be integrated into HRI; and (4) summarize why value-sensitive and participatory design offer promising approaches to professional social service robots

  • We emphasize that human service employees are a group of stakeholders that have been overlooked in HRI, but whom we view as having a central role in the future of professional service robots

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Summary

Introduction

There is a gap between social sciences’ discourse concerning emotions at work and how emotions have been addressed by social robotics and human–robot interaction (HRI) communities. In today’s human–robot configurations, this gap is (usually) as obvious, and ways to address it remain elusive This paper explores this difference, To do so, we (1) discuss the limitations of the current approaches to emotion for professional service robots; (2) introduce the sociology of labor perspective on emotions in service industries to HRI community; (3) provide some suggestions about how insights from sociology of labor could be integrated into HRI; and (4) summarize why value-sensitive and participatory design offer promising approaches to professional social service robots. We emphasize that human service employees are a group of stakeholders that have been overlooked in HRI, but whom we view as having a central role in the future of professional service robots Towards these ends, this paper is grounded in the core assumption that when professional service robots are introduced “in the wild” (Sabanovic et al 2006), they will inevitably influence how human employees perform emotional labor and how they relate to their work tasks and workplace identity Our aim with this paper is to stress that affective labor is something that everyone in service work is demanded to master, and which concerns all service employees, as a result

Approaches to emotions in HRI
Sociology of labor perspectives on emotions
Social service robots and affective labor
Methodological implications for HRI
Conclusion
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