How Does Unintentional Eye Contact with a Robot Affect Users' Emotional Attachment to It?: Investigation on the Effects of Eye Contact and Joint Attention on Users' Emotional Attachment to a Robot

摘要

Eye contact behavior plays a significant role in establishing intimate interaction between a user and a robot. In this study, more specifically, we assumed that unintentional eye contact with a robot would make a person feel a stronger emotional attachment to the robot, especially when the user believes that s/he had achieved joint attention with the robot. To verify this assumption, we developed an experimental setting to make users establish joint attention and eye-contact with a robot. We then conducted an experiment to investigate the above assumption; that is, independent variables were with/without eye-contact and with/without joint attention, while the dependent variable was a questionnaire that consisted of a love-liking scale. The results showed that our assumption was verified.