Persuasive Social Robots using Social Power Dynamics

Abstract

Social Power, the potential for social influence, is a pervasive social process in human interactions. On the other hand, recent advances on Social Robotics raise the question whether a social robot can be used as a persuasive agent. To date, different attempts have been performed using several approaches to tackle this research question. However, few studies looked at the concept of social power in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and how it can be beneficial to the development of persuasion skills. This is the precisely the goal of the work that is described here. In this text, we briefly report the results of our recent advancements for this objective and draw suggestion for speculating on future directions.