Does the Intervention of a Social Mediator Robot Using Weight Shifts Suppress the Aggressive Emotional States of Humans In Interpersonal Conflicts?

Abstract

Controlling anger and other aggressive emotions is important for maintaining healthy interpersonal relationships. However, humans are known to become aggressive during text messaging. In this study, we discuss the use of a handheld robot equipped with a movable weight inside its body as a mediator between humans in text messaging. Presenting the internal weight movements when the robot reports a message received from the human sender may influence the psychological state of the message receiver who holds the robot in his or her hand (e.g., he or she will listen to the message more seriously). To test this hypothesis, a controlled study was conducted with 94 participants. We then examined the effects of three dialogue scripts with and without the robot's weight shift. The results showed that introducing weight shifts along with the robot's speech can suppress the user's aggressive emotions. For example, it successfully suppressed anger by 23% on average. These results suggest that weight shifts can be an effective expression modality for mediator robots.