The paper discusses a study investigating how a robot’s affective narrative impacts its ability to elicit empathy in human observers. Three different affective narrative strategies (funny, sad, neutral) were used while the robot was becoming less functional at its task. The results showed that a sad narrative significantly influenced the participants’ willingness to help the robot throughout the interaction. The study suggests that affective narratives can be useful in short-term interactions that benefit from emotional connections between humans and robots.

 

Publication date: 9 Jan 2024
Project Page: Unavailable
Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.02684