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null (Ed.)Social robots hold the potential to be an effective and appropriate technology in reducing stress and improving the mental health of adolescents. In order to understand the effect of adolescent-to-robot disclosure on momentary stress, we conducted an exploratory, mixed-methods study with sixty-nine US adolescents (ages 14–21) in school settings. We compared a generic, minimalist robot interaction among three different robot embodiments: physical, digital computer screen, and immersive, virtual reality. We found participants’ momentary stress levels significantly decreased across multiple interactions over time. The physical and virtual reality embodiments were most effective for stress reduction. In addition, our qualitative findings provide unique insights into the types of stressors adolescents shared with the social robots as well as their experiences with the different interaction embodiments.more » « less
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With the prevalence of mental health problems today, designing human-robot interaction for mental health intervention is not only possible, but critical. The current experiment examined how three types of robot disclosure (emotional, technical, and by-proxy) affect robot perception and human disclosure behavior during a stress-sharing activity. Emotional robot disclosure resulted in the lowest robot perceived safety. Post-hoc analysis revealed that increased perceived stress predicted reduced human disclosure, user satisfaction, robot likability, and future robot use. Negative attitudes toward robots also predicted reduced intention for future robot use. This work informs on the possible design of robot disclosure, as well as how individual attributes, such as perceived stress, can impact human robot interaction in a mental health context.more » « less
