The Role of Good Human Uniqueness in Social Robot Anthropomorphism Influenced by Chronic Loneliness

Social robot companion will become pervasive in the near future as a result of technological development and social work robotization to confront long-time loneliness. Chronic loneliness is not only a painful individual experience but an increasingly serious social problem. It is thus crucial to drill down the relationship between people’s chronic loneliness and how they see humans in this artificial intelligent agent. Based on the designed human-robot interactions, we measured participants’ anthropomorphic tendency on our social robot prototype as well as their chronic loneliness, and found that chronic loneliness — permanent disposition caused by person, not easily relieved — deterred participants from making anthropomorphic inference of the robot (i.e., to perceive human essence, warmth and competence, from the robot). In particular, mediation analysis revealed that reduced attribution of positive human uniqueness traits (i.e., Humble, Thorough, Organized, Broadminded, and Polite) to the robot explained the negative relation between being chronically lonely and anthropomorphizing the robot. We further corroborated this result by enabling the robot to conversationally manifest the five traits and successfully verified a substantial reduction in the negative effect of chronic loneliness on robot anthropomorphism. The findings suggest good human uniqueness, exemplifying secondary emotions, is vital not only in interpersonal contexts but in establishing connections with social robots.