Does Emotional State Affect How People Perceive Robots?

Abstract

Emotions serve important regulatory roles in social interaction. Although recognition, modeling, and expression of emotion have been extensively researched in human-robot interaction and related fields, the role of human emotion in perceptions of and interactions with robots has so far received considerably less attention. We here report inconclusive results from a pilot study employing an affect induction procedure to investigate the effect of people's emotional state on their perceptions of human-likeness and mind in robots, as well as attitudes toward robots. We propose a new study design based on the findings from this study.