Investigating Reward/Punishment Strategies in the Persuasiveness of Social Robots

This paper presents the results of a user study designed to investigate social robots’ persuasiveness. In the design, the robot attempts to persuade users in two different conditions comparing to a control condition. In one condition, the robot aims at persuading users by giving them a reward. In the second condition, the robot tries to persuade by punishing users. The results indicated that the robot succeeded to persuade the users to select a less-desirable choice comparing to a better one. However, no difference was found in the perception of the robot’s warmth nor discomfort, comparing the two strategies. The results suggest that social robots are capable of persuading users objectively, but further investigation is required to investigate persuasion subjectively.