Promotion of human empathy throughself-disclosure of anthropomorphic agents

Abstract

One way to improve the relationship between humans and agents is to have humans sympathize with the agents. By empathizing, humans take positive and kind actions toward agents, and emphasizing makes it easier for humans to accept agents. In this study, we focused on self-disclosure from agents to humans in order to realize anthropomorphic agents that elicit empathy from humans. Then, we experimentally investigated the possibility that an agent's self-disclosure facilitates human empathy. We formulate two hypotheses and experimentally analyze and discuss the conditions in which humans have more empathy for agents. This experiment is a three-way mixed plan, and the factors are 12 conditions of appearance, self-disclosure, and empathy values before and after watching the video, 2 × 3 × 2. Participants were asked to complete a 12-item questionnaire after completing two tasks, and the promotion of empathy for human agents was analyzed. As a result, we found that the appearance factor did not have a main effect, and self-disclosure, which is highly relevant to the scenario used, facilitated more human empathy with statistically significant difference. We also found that no self-disclosure suppressed empathy. These results support our hypotheses.