Mediated hugs modulate impressions of Hearsay information

ABSTRACT

Direct interpersonal touch affects the recipients' impression of the touch providers and information related to them. However, the applicability of this fact in mediated interpersonal touch remains unclear. In this study, we describe the alleviating effect of mediated interpersonal touch on social judgment and show that mediated hugs with a remote person affect the impression of the hearsay information about a third person. In our experiment, participants rated their impressions via a questionnaire and recall test. Results show that mediated hugs reduced negative inferences when people recalled information about the third person. As a possible underlying mechanism, we argue that stress reduction through mediated hugs moderates negative impressions of the third person.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Interpersonal touch
• mediated touch
• huggable communication media
• impression bias
• hearsay information
• stress reduction

Disclosure statement

Sumioka and Ishiguro are employed by ATR. ATR has patents on Hugvies. Ishiguro has consulted for Vstone Co., Ltd., which sells Hugvies, and received compensation. He also owns stock in the company.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by JST the Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology (ERATO), the ISHIGURO Symbiotic Human-robot Interaction Project (Project Number: JPMJER1401), and partially by JST Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST) Grant Number JPMJCR18A1, Japan.

Notes on contributors

Junya Nakanishi

Junya Nakanishi received the Ph.D. degrees in engineering from Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, in 2018. In graduate school, he was a Student Intern, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute (ATR, 2012–2018) and a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS fellow, DC2, 2016–2018). Currently, he is a Research Assistant Professor at Frontier Intelligent System Laboratory, Osaka University. His research interests include human-robot touch interaction, human-robot interaction in service encounter and advertisement.

Hidenobu Sumioka

Hidenobu Sumioka received the Ph.D. degrees in engineering from Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, in 2008. From April 2008, he was a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS fellow, DC2). From April 2009, he was a researcher at Artificial intelligence Laboratory directed by Prof. Rolf Pfeifer. Since January 2012, he has been a researcher at Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR). Currently, he is the leader of Presence Media Research Group in Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories, ATR. His research interests include human-robot touch interaction, application of a social robot to elderly care, influence of social robot in brain activity, information theory.

Hiroshi Ishiguro

Hiroshi Ishiguro received a D. Eng. in systems engineering from the Osaka University, Japan in 1991. He is currently Professor of Department of Systems Innovation in the Graduate School of Engineering Science at Osaka University (2009-) and Distinguished Professor of Osaka University (2017-). He is also visiting Director (2014-) (group leader: 2002–2013) of Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute and an ATR fellow. His research interests include sensor networks, interactive robotics, and android science. He received the Osaka Cultural Award in 2011. In 2015, he received the Prize for Science and Technology (Research Category) by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).