Effective Persuasion Strategies for Socially Assistive Robots

Abstract

In this paper we present the results of an experimental study investigating the application of human persuasive strategies to a social robot. We demonstrate that robot displays of goodwill and similarity to the participant significantly increased robot persuasiveness, as measured objectively by participant behaviour. However, such strategies had no impact on subjective measures concerning perception of the robot, and perception of the robot did not correlate with participant behaviour. We hypothesise that this is due to difficulty in accurately measuring perception of a robot using subjective measures. We suggest our results are particularly relevant for the design and development of socially assistive robots.