From Small Talk to Rapport: Exploring Robot Self-Disclosure in Collaborative Tasks

2026-08-28

AI Summary

研究探索了机器人在协作任务中通过自我披露进行闲聊的方法，发现低自我披露策略比高自我披露策略更能促进人机合作和团队协调。

Abstract

People naturally chat while collaborating and share personal information (i.e., self-disclose) to build rapport and maintain social connections. As robots are increasingly developed to work with people, the effective use of these social behaviors to enhance engagement and support teamwork becomes ever more important. While prior work has shown that robot-initiated small talk can benefit human-robot collaboration, less is known about how best to design such small talk. In this work, we explore how self-disclosure may be designed to support small talk within a human-robot team---especially when the robot is an industrial manipulator that lacks anthropomorphic cues and performs physical work. We first developed an LLM-driven manipulator capable of partaking in small talk, adopting either a low-disclosure or high-disclosure strategy. We then conducted a user study (N = 50) to investigate how self-disclosure in small talk influences human-robot dynamics. Unexpectedly, participants disclosed more in the low-disclosure condition and reported stronger teaming and coordination than those in the high-disclosure condition. This effect was more pronounced among users with prior experience teaming with robots. These results suggest that increasing robot self-disclosure does not necessarily foster rapport, social connection, or reciprocal disclosure; other factors, such as prior HRI experience, should be considered.

Problem

• self-disclosure
• human-robot collaboration
• small talk
• industrial manipulator
• rapport

Innovation

• self-disclosure
• human-robot collaboration
• LLM-driven manipulator
• team dynamics
• HRI experience