Improving psychological wellbeing with robots

Robot users that receive psychological or psy-chotherapeutic support from robots (e.g. robots that motivate users to perform certain tasks) are usually aware of participating in a psychological intervention. The present paper aims to ascertain whether robot users should indeed remain aware, or rather unaware, of participating in such type of interventions. We present an experiment with two conditions. In one condition (direct) the robot made participants aware of being subjected to a psychological intervention, the three good things exercise from positive psychology, whereas in the other condition (indirect) participants were not made aware of the intervention. Our results show that the robot succeeded in improving participants' positive affect in the direct condition but their affect worsened in the indirect condition.

[1]  Heleen Riper,et al.  Positive psychology interventions: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies , 2013, BMC Public Health.

[2]  D. Watson.  Intraindividual and interindividual analyses of positive and negative affect: their relation to health complaints, perceived stress, and daily activities. , 1988, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[3]  M. Orne.  On the social psychology of the psychological experiment: With particular reference to demand characteristics and their implications. , 1962 .

[4]  Cynthia Breazeal,et al.  Robots at home: Understanding long-term human-robot interaction , 2008, 2008 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[5]  A. Tellegen.  Structures of Mood and Personality and Their Relevance to Assessing Anxiety, With an Emphasis on Self-Report , 2019, Anxiety and the Anxiety Disorders.

[6]  A. Billard,et al.  Effects of repeated exposure to a humanoid robot on children with autism , 2004 .

[7]  Denise J. Larsen,et al.  Hope-focused practices during early psychotherapy sessions: Part I: Implicit approaches. , 2010 .

[8]  Takanori Shibata,et al.  Psychological and Social Effects of One Year Robot Assisted Activity on Elderly People at a Health Service Facility for the Aged , 2005, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[9]  D. Watson,et al.  Toward a consensual structure of mood. , 1985, Psychological bulletin.

[10]  Charles S. Carver,et al.  On the Power of Positive Thinking: The Benefits of Being Optimistic , 1993 .

[11]  S. Lyubomirsky,et al.  The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success? , 2005, Psychological bulletin.

[12]  D. Watson,et al.  Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: the PANAS scales. , 1988, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[13]  M. Seligman,et al.  A balanced psychology and a full life. , 2004, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[14]  M. Seligman,et al.  Positive psychology progress: empirical validation of interventions. , 2005, The American psychologist.

[15]  Kerstin Dautenhahn,et al.  What is a robot companion - friend, assistant or butler? , 2005, 2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[16]  M. Csíkszentmihályi,et al.  Positive psychology. An introduction. , 2000, The American psychologist.

[17]  M. Seligman.  Positive psychology, positive prevention, and positive therapy. , 2002 .

[18]  Andy P. Field,et al.  Discovering Statistics Using SPSS , 2000 .

[19]  Fabrizio Benedetti,et al.  Open versus hidden medical treatments: The patient's knowledge about a therapy affects the therapy outcome. , 2003 .

[20]  David R. Thomas,et al.  A General Inductive Approach for Analyzing Qualitative Evaluation Data , 2006 .

[21]  B. Fredrickson.  The role of positive emotions in positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. , 2001, The American psychologist.

[22]  Vanessa Evers,et al.  Robots to motivate elderly people: Present and future challenges , 2013, 2013 IEEE RO-MAN.