People help robots who help others, not robots who help themselves

Robots that engage in social behaviors benefit greatly from possessing tools that allow them to manipulate the course of an interaction. Using a non-anthropomorphic social robot and a simple counting game, we examine the effects that empathy-generating robot dialogue has on participant performance across three conditions. In the self-directed condition, the robot petitions the participant to reduce his or her performance so that the robot can avoid punishment. In the externally-directed condition, the robot petitions on behalf of its programmer so that its programmer can avoid punishment. The control condition does not involve any petitions for empathy. We find that externally-directed petitions from the robot show a higher likelihood of motivating the participant to sacrifice his or her own performance to help, at the expense of incurring negative social effects. We also find that experiencing these emotional dialogue events can have complex and difficult to predict effects, driving some participants to antipathy, leaving some unaffected, and manipulating others into feeling empathy towards the robot.