Embarrassment in HRI: remediation and the role of robot responses in emotion control

As robots became increasingly integrated into daily life, their ability to influence human emotions through verbal and nonverbal expressions is gaining attention. While robots have been explored for their role in emotional expression, their potential in emotion regulation particularly in mitigating or amplifying embarrassment remains under-explored in human-robot interaction. To address this gap, this study investigates whether and how robots can regulate the embarrassment emotion through their responses. A between-subjects experiment was conducted with 96 participants (48 males and 48 females) using the social robot Furhat. Participants experienced an embarrassing situation induced by a failure of meshing scenario, followed by the robot adopting one of three response attitudes: neutral, empathic, or ridiculing. Additionally, the robot's social agency was manipulated by varying its facial appearance between a human-like and an anime-like appearances. The findings indicate that embarrassment was effectively induced, as evidenced by physiological data, body movements, facial expressions, and participants' verbal responses. The anime-faced robot elicited lower embarrassment and arousal due to its lower perceived social agency and anthropomorphism. The robot's attitude was the dominant factor shaping participants' emotional responses and perceptions. The neutral and empathic attitudes with an anime face were found to be the most effective in eliciting mild emotions and mitigating embarrassment. Interestingly, an empathic attitude is suspected to be favored over a neutral one as it elicited the lowest embarrassment. However, an empathic attitude risks shaming the participant due to its indirect confrontation that inherently acknowledges the embarrassing incident which is undesirable in Japanese culture. Nevertheless, in terms of the robot's perceived evaluation by participants, a neutral attitude was the most favored. This study highlights the role of robot responses in emotion regulation, particularly in embarrassment control, and provides insights into designing socially intelligent robots that can modulate human emotions effectively.