TY - GEN
T1 - The role of empathic traits in emotion recognition and emotion contagion of Cozmo robots
AU - Hsieh, Te Yi
AU - Cross, Emily S.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - In this online study, we investigated how well people could recognize emotions displayed by video recordings of a Cozmo robot, and the extent to which emotion recognition is shaped by individuals' empathic traits. We also explored whether participants who report more empathic tendencies experienced more emotional contagion when watching Cozmo's emotional displays, since emotion contagion is a core aspect of empathy. We tested participants' perceptions of Cozmo's happiness, anger, sadness, surprise, and neutral displays. Across 103 participants, we report high recognition rates for most emotion categories except neutral animations. Furthermore, the mixed effects modelling revealed that an empathy subtype (the empathic concern subscale from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index) significantly impacted emotional contagion. Contrary to predictions, participants with high empathic concern subscale scores were less likely to find the robot's videos emotionally contagious. The study validates the utility of Cozmo robots to display emotional cues recognizable to human users, and further suggests that empathic traits could shape our affective interactions with robots, though perhaps in a counterintuitive way.
AB - In this online study, we investigated how well people could recognize emotions displayed by video recordings of a Cozmo robot, and the extent to which emotion recognition is shaped by individuals' empathic traits. We also explored whether participants who report more empathic tendencies experienced more emotional contagion when watching Cozmo's emotional displays, since emotion contagion is a core aspect of empathy. We tested participants' perceptions of Cozmo's happiness, anger, sadness, surprise, and neutral displays. Across 103 participants, we report high recognition rates for most emotion categories except neutral animations. Furthermore, the mixed effects modelling revealed that an empathy subtype (the empathic concern subscale from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index) significantly impacted emotional contagion. Contrary to predictions, participants with high empathic concern subscale scores were less likely to find the robot's videos emotionally contagious. The study validates the utility of Cozmo robots to display emotional cues recognizable to human users, and further suggests that empathic traits could shape our affective interactions with robots, though perhaps in a counterintuitive way.
KW - dispositional empathy
KW - emotion contagion
KW - emotion recognition
KW - human-robot interaction
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85136113087
U2 - 10.1109/HRI53351.2022.9889501
DO - 10.1109/HRI53351.2022.9889501
M3 - Conference proceeding contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85136113087
T3 - ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
SP - 802
EP - 806
BT - HRI 2022
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
CY - Piscataway, NJ
T2 - Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (17th : 2022)
Y2 - 7 March 2022 through 10 March 2022
ER -