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. 2023 May 10;18(5):e0283955.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0283955. eCollection 2023.

Influence of agent's self-disclosure on human empathy

Takahiro Tsumura  1   2 , Seiji Yamada  1   2
Affiliations

Influence of agent's self-disclosure on human empathy

Takahiro Tsumura et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

As AI technologies progress, social acceptance of AI agents, including intelligent virtual agents and robots, is becoming even more important for more applications of AI in human society. One way to improve the relationship between humans and anthropomorphic agents is to have humans empathize with the agents. By empathizing, humans act positively and kindly toward agents, which makes it easier for them to accept the agents. In this study, we focus on self-disclosure from agents to humans in order to increase empathy felt by humans toward anthropomorphic agents. We experimentally investigate the possibility that self-disclosure from an agent facilitates human empathy. We formulate hypotheses and experimentally analyze and discuss the conditions in which humans have more empathy toward agents. Experiments were conducted with a three-way mixed plan, and the factors were the agents' appearance (human, robot), self-disclosure (high-relevance self-disclosure, low-relevance self-disclosure, no self-disclosure), and empathy before/after a video stimulus. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed using data from 918 participants. We found that the appearance factor did not have a main effect, and self-disclosure that was highly relevant to the scenario used facilitated more human empathy with a statistically significant difference. We also found that no self-disclosure suppressed empathy. These results support our hypotheses. This study reveals that self-disclosure represents an important characteristic of anthropomorphic agents which helps humans to accept them.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Flowchart of the experiment.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Scene of video when appearance was human.
Part where human-like agent and participants interacted.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Scene of video when appearance was robot.
Part where robot agent and participants interacted.
Fig 4
Fig 4. Flowchart of scenario.
Fig 5
Fig 5. All graphs of the interaction between self-disclosure and before/after video.
Fig 6
Fig 6. Results for self-disclosure after watching video for empathy.
Error bars show standard deviation.
Fig 7
Fig 7. Results for self-disclosure after watching video for affective empathy.
Error bars show standard deviation.
Fig 8
Fig 8. Results for self-disclosure after watching video for cognitive empathy.
Error bars show standard deviation.
Fig 9
Fig 9. Results for self-disclosure to empathic response.
Error bars show standard deviation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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