Does Self-Disclosing to a Robot Induce Liking for the Robot? Testing the Disclosure and Liking Hypotheses in Human–Robot Interaction

Sharing with Robots: Why do we do it and how does it make us feel?

“…A recent study suggests that rapport can also be experienced via disclosure reciprocity, as the study found that reciprocal self-disclosure from the robot increased liking in intimate self-disclosure. Nevertheless, the results of the study also report that reciprocal self-disclosure in non-intimate self-disclosure resulted in decreased rates of liking the robot (121). Similar evidence for the positive role of rapport is evidenced in a study by (122) showing that people in a more negative mood were more likely to benefit from self-disclosing to a robot compared to participating in a writing disclosure to a journal.…”

When Robots Self-Disclosure Personal Information, Do Users Reciprocate?

“…However, a related study on whether user disclosure of information resulted in liking the robot produced somewhat different results. Mou et al (2023) found that reciprocal self-disclosure from a robot increased liking for conditions of intimate selfdisclosure but decreased liking in non-intimate self-disclosure. Barfield (2021) also investigated self-disclosure of personal and sensitive information to robots of different appearances and found that robots with a friendly facial expression were more likely to prompt self-disclosure.…”

“…For example, care robots may require that people disclose personal health information to a robot, robo-advisors may require sensitive financial information to be disclosed, and robots serving as a behavioral counselor may require sensitive and potentially embarrassing information about relationships and mental health to be disclosed. From research in psychology, one factor which may determine whether an individual discloses personal information to another, is whether the disclosure is in response to or prompted by a personal disclosure first made by the other person (Barfield, 2021;Cozby, 1973;Eyssel, et al 2017;Mou et al 2023;Neerinex et al 2022;Zhu et al 2023). In fact, we have a tendency to disclose personal information, even to a stranger, if that person has first disclosed personal information to us.…”