TY - GEN
T1 - Exploring the Effect of Robotic Embodiment and Empathetic Tone of LLMs on Empathy Elicitation
AU - Darwesh, Liza
AU - Singh, Jaspreet
AU - Marian, Marin
AU - Alexa, Eduard
AU - Hindriks, Koen
AU - Baraka, Kim
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2025.
PY - 2025
Y1 - 2025
N2 - This study investigates the elicitation of empathy toward a third party through interaction with social agents. Participants engaged with either a physical robot or a voice-enabled chatbot, both driven by a large language model (LLM) programmed to exhibit either an empathetic tone or remain neutral. The interaction is focused on a fictional character, Katie Banks, who is in a challenging situation and in need of financial donations. The willingness to help Katie, measured by the number of hours participants were willing to volunteer, along with their perceptions of the agent, were assessed for 60 participants. Results indicate that neither robotic embodiment nor empathetic tone significantly influenced participants’ willingness to volunteer. While the LLM effectively simulated human empathy, fostering genuine empathetic responses in participants proved challenging.
AB - This study investigates the elicitation of empathy toward a third party through interaction with social agents. Participants engaged with either a physical robot or a voice-enabled chatbot, both driven by a large language model (LLM) programmed to exhibit either an empathetic tone or remain neutral. The interaction is focused on a fictional character, Katie Banks, who is in a challenging situation and in need of financial donations. The willingness to help Katie, measured by the number of hours participants were willing to volunteer, along with their perceptions of the agent, were assessed for 60 participants. Results indicate that neither robotic embodiment nor empathetic tone significantly influenced participants’ willingness to volunteer. While the LLM effectively simulated human empathy, fostering genuine empathetic responses in participants proved challenging.
KW - Empathy Elicitation
KW - Human-Computer Interaction
KW - LLM Integration in HCI
KW - Robotic Embodiment
KW - Third-Party Interaction
KW - Voice-Enabled Chatbot
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105002147035
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105002147035#tab=citedBy
U2 - 10.1007/978-981-96-3525-2_1
DO - 10.1007/978-981-96-3525-2_1
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:105002147035
SN - 9789819635245
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science
SP - 1
EP - 11
BT - Social Robotics
A2 - Palinko, Oskar
A2 - Bodenhagen, Leon
A2 - Cabibihan, John-John
A2 - Fischer, Kerstin
A2 - Šabanović, Selma
A2 - Winkle, Katie
A2 - Behera, Laxmidhar
A2 - Ge, Shuzhi Sam
A2 - Chrysostomou, Dimitrios
A2 - Jiang, Wanyue
A2 - He, Hongsheng
PB - Springer Nature
T2 - 16th International Conference on Social Robotics, ICSR + AI 2024
Y2 - 23 October 2024 through 26 October 2024
ER -