“Honne and Tatemae”: Expression of the Agent’s Hidden Desire Through Physiological Phenomena

Abstract

Our research assesses the gap between people’s true feelings and desires and their behavior and opinions in public. In this research, we focused on “internal desire” as one of the internal states of an agent and discussed a method of expressing desire by combining voluntary behavior and heartbeat expression as an involuntary physiological phenomenon. In this experiment, first, we verified the expression of desire by behavior or heartbeat expression individually. Next, we verified how the strength of internal desire and the suppression of desire change through a combination of agent behavior and heart rate, and we analyzed their relationship. The results showed that both desire behaviors, which are gazing and approaching the object, and the different patterns of heart rate changes affected the intensity of desire. In addition, the combination of large heart rate changes and low desire-level behaviors expressed the agent’s suppressed desire state, which suggested the agent’s true internal state of wanting but holding back.