Abstract
Robots that can talk with humans play increasingly important roles in society. However, current conversation robots remain unskilled at eliciting empathic feelings in humans. To address this problem, we used a robot that speaks in a voice synchronized with human vocal prosody. We conducted an experiment in which human participants held positive conversations with the robot by reading scenarios under conditions with and without vocal synchronization. We assessed seven subjective responses related to affective empathy (e.g., emotional connection) and measured the physiological emotional responses using facial electromyography from the corrugator supercilii and zygomatic major muscles as well as the skin conductance level. The subjective ratings consistently revealed heightened empathic responses to the robot in the synchronization condition compared with that under the de-synchronizing condition. The physiological signals showed that more positive and stronger emotional arousal responses to the robot with synchronization. These findings suggest that robots that are able to vocally synchronize with humans can elicit empathic emotional responses.
Highlights
Robots that can converse with humans play increasingly important roles in society [1]by providing automated services, assisting with communication, and offering psychological support
Using an approach based on the strategy of human–human communication, we focused on the vocal synchronization and considered its application to dialog robots
The results of the subjective responses consistently indicated that the participants felt stronger affective empathy-related feelings in response to the robot that vocally synchronized with them compared with the robot that did not
Summary
By providing automated services, assisting with communication, and offering psychological support. As the number of single-person households increases, feelings of social isolation have increased owing to a decrease in the number of partners available for daily conversation. This can contribute to decreases in happiness and physical activity as well as an increased risk of dementia, among the elderly. To enhance the role of social welfare workers in providing psychological support, dialog robots have recently begun to attract attention. Robots have not yet been designed to interact with people as conversation partners over a long periods. One issue that arises in human–robot conversations is the robot’s inability to elicit affective empathy [4,5]
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