In the present project, we will investigate basic affective responses and feelings related to satisfaction of social needs elicited by interaction with social robots. We will focus on a fundamental form of social interaction: making eye contact. We will investigate, both in adult participants and in young infants, whether eye contact with a social robot will elicit similar psychophysiological responses as eye contact with another human. We will also investigate whether a social robot's gaze direction can influence human partners' feelings related to social inclusion versus exclusion, and whether social contact with a robot can have “healing power” on negative feelings resulting from being socially excluded. The results will advance our knowledge regarding whether the interaction signals sent by social robots can trigger socio-cognitive processes and affective reactions similar to those observed during human-human interaction.

2020

2024