Empathy with Human's and Robot's Embarrassments in Virtual Environments

Abstract

We feel embarrassed not only when we are embarrassed but also when we are watching others embarrassed. Humans show empathy for pain not only human others but also robots. However, it has not been investigated whether humans show empathy for robot's embarrassment. Thus, we aimed to test whether humans can empathize with robot's embarrassment in virtual environments. Four situations both of non-embarrassing and embarrassing stimuli were presented on an HMD, and participants were asked to rate their own feeling of embarrassment and the actor's feeling of embarrassment. We found that the own feeling of embarrassment was higher in human than robot actors, and higher in embarrassing than non-embarrassing conditions. The actor's feeling of embarrassment was rated higher in embarrassing than non-embarrassing conditions, and the effect was much larger in human than robot actors. These results suggest that participants could show empathy with both for human and robot in the embarrassing situations, but they infer that the robot feels less embarrassed than humans.