| This thesis proposes an experimental study to examine the effects of the expression of empathy,cultural background and trust in the interaction between humans and robots.The objective is to provide insight for design of emotionally empathetic communication by socially interactive robots.The independent variables used were conversational style and cultural background.The degree of trust in the robot resulting from that conversational style was measured using an economic trust game.A laboratory experiment with 21 international and 22 Chinese subjects was conducted using a NAO V5 robot.Statistical analysis to test the hypotheses was done by basic descriptive statistics,as well as a number of non-parametric tests.Besides this,video recordings and other qualitative observations of participants’ interaction with the robot were analyzed.The statistic results showed that there was no direct relationship between the expression of empathy by the robot in a conversation and the investments made by the participants during the trust game.It does however show that Chinese participants invested more in the investment game than international participants.From the qualitative analysis we found that although some participants anticipated the option to lose money,they thought it would be because they were unlucky,none of them thought they would be intentionally cheated by the robot.We also found that,unless interaction with the NAO robot was necessary to know how to proceed with the experiment,participants chose to ignore the robot’s instructions. |
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