Let's Talk About It! Subjective and Objective Disclosures to Social Robots

This study aims to test the viability of using social robots for eliciting rich disclosures from humans to identify their needs and emotional states. Self-disclosure has been studied in the psychological literature in many ways, addressing both peoples' subjective perceptions of their disclosures, as well as objective disclosures evaluating these via direct observation and analysis of verbal and written output. Here we are interested in how people disclose (non-sensitive) personal information to robots, in an aim to further understand the differences between one's subjective perceptions of disclosure compared to evidence of disclosure from the shared content. An experimental design is suggested for evaluating disclosure to social robots compared to humans and conversational agents. Initial results suggest that while people perceive they disclose more to humans than to humanoid social robots or conversational agents, no actual observed differences in the content of the disclosure emerges between the three agents.