Social Humanoids and Human Interactions: Investigating the Role of Trust, Persuasion, and Empathy in Fostering Healthy Behaviors Among College Students

Social Humanoids and Human Interactions: Investigating the Role of Trust, Persuasion, and Empathy in Fostering Healthy Behaviors Among College Students

Alvin Sherman Library

The exposure of social humanoid robots introduces a wide variety of interactive opportunities by utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered automatons/automated machines to enhance both the quality and simplicity of human lives. Using AI systems, humanoid robots can be programmed to execute various tasks autonomously, ranging from assisting with administrative and clerical tasks, clinical and healthcare tasks, social interaction and emotional support tasks, as well as educational and training tasks, amongst others. With successful integration into healthcare settings, current research explores employing social humanoids to add social dimensions to patient care, fostering human-like interactions. Researchers are assessing the quality of interactions between social humanoids and humans across levels of trust, persuasion, and empathy to understand the gaps in communication before the integration of these humanoids into the healthcare system. This project aims to explore interactions promoting awareness of healthy lifestyles through lifestyle categories of exercise, nutrition, sleep habits, and mindfulness. The first experimental group received a subject matter-expert validated presentation about healthy lifestyle topics by humans. The second group received an interactive team presentation by two social humanoids named Nau^© and Pepper^© together with humans. The control group did not receive any interventions. A team of 29 subject-matter experts made up of human coaches, nutritionists, communication trainers, technologists, sports medicine physicians, as well as exercise coaches validated the presentations as well as the survey utilized. The results of the study provided insight into human perceptions and interactions with social humanoid robots.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence, empathy, healthy lifestyle, persuasion, social humanoid, trust.