The Psychological Impact of Individuals Engaging in Complementary Relationships with Agents

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on the complementary relationship between humans and robots to facilitate comfortable coexistence, and investigate the effect of robots with complementary relationships on human psychology. In the experiment, the participants were asked to cooperate with a robot agent in a VR space to play the target-throwing game. We prepared two abilities for the experimental participants and agents: throwing power, which is the ability to powerfully throw the ball, and ball control, which is the ability to accurately control the ball, and designed strengths and weaknesses in these two abilities to produce complementary relationships. Experimental results showed that having a complementary relationship makes the agent appear more intelligent and human-like while also increasing the participant’s enjoyment of the target-throwing game and degree of intimacy with the agent.