Are physically embodied social agents better than disembodied social agents? : the effects of physical embodiment, tactile interaction, and people's loneliness in human–robot interaction

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of physical embodiment in human-agent interaction. Experiment 1 (N = 32) shows positive effects of physical embodiment on the feeling of an agent's social presence, the evaluation of the agent, the assessment of public evaluation of the...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lee, Kwan Min, Jung, Younbo, Kim, Jaywoo, Kim, Sang Ryong
Other Authors: Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/100910
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/18223
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary:Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of physical embodiment in human-agent interaction. Experiment 1 (N = 32) shows positive effects of physical embodiment on the feeling of an agent's social presence, the evaluation of the agent, the assessment of public evaluation of the agent, and the evaluation of the interaction with the agent. A path analysis reveals that the feeling of the agent's social presence mediates the participants' evaluation of the social agent. Experiment 2 (N = 32) shows that physical embodiment with restricted tactile interaction causes null or even negative effects in human agent interaction. In addition, Experiment 2 indicates that lonely people feel higher social presence of social agents, and provide more positive social responses to social agents than non-lonely people. The importance of physical embodiment and tactile communication in human-agent interaction and the diverse role of social robots, especially for the lonely population, are discussed.