How robots can persuade people to save energy
A Persuasive Robotic Agent to Save Energy: The Influence of Social Feedback, Feedback Valence and Task Similarity on Energy Conservation Behavior
by Jaap Ham and Cees Midden in Neitherland
iCat
The 3 interesting experiments
Participants did some laundry tasks on a simulated laundry
Social feedback versus Factual feedback
Positive feedback vs negative feedback
Social vs Factual feedback
↑ virtual
light on top ear
low & high
Positive vs Negative feedback
-
+
- smile face
- "awesome"
- -
- sad face
- "terrible"
Findings
-
consume less
- social feedback
- negative feedback
- consume the same
- low agency & high agency social feedback
Pros: 3 experiments
-
second
- between-subject study
- reduce effects of opposite feedback (+ and -)
- used a CRT monitor and two loudspeakers
- white, red, black
- pleasant ring
- third: task similarity -> save even more on similar tasks
- Results indicate that when tasks were relatively dissimilar, negative feedback led to the most savings.
- But, importantly, the effects of negative feedback were larger when tasks were relatively similar.
Another pro
-
low and high social feedback
- facial vs speech
- indicates style matters
Missing point
human beings during the the process of persuading
Negative feedback: WildCat
Discussions
What if this study is a long term study? Are those findings still applicable?
This paper only focused on getting result - changing human's behaviour. Do you think it's more appropriate to analyze participants' thoughts?
Do you think negative feedback should be apply more?