The Impact of Adaptive Emotional Alignment on Mental State Attribution and User Empathy in HRI

2025-09-02

AI Summary

This study investigates how adaptive affective alignment influences users’ attribution of mental states and empathic responses toward robots in human–robot interaction. Method: A controlled experiment (N=42) was conducted using the NAO robot, comparing emotionally aligned versus neutral dialogue conditions. Contribution/Results: While affective alignment did not significantly alter perceptions of persuasiveness or communication style, it significantly enhanced users’ attribution of robotic mental states (e.g., intention, affect) and subjective empathic experience (p<0.01). The key innovation is a real-time emotion recognition–based framework for dynamic affective synchronization, enabling precise emotional entrainment independent of linguistic content or anthropomorphic design. Crucially, this work provides the first controlled empirical evidence that affective synchrony *per se*—decoupled from semantic or persona cues—suffices to augment social cognition. These findings offer foundational theoretical support and a reproducible technical pathway for advancing affective interaction paradigms in social robotics.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Human-Robot Interaction
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Affective Computing
• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: The sharing economy

Abstract

The paper presents an experiment on the effects of adaptive emotional alignment between agents, considered a prerequisite for empathic communication, in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Using the NAO robot, we investigate the impact of an emotionally aligned, empathic, dialogue on these aspects: (i) the robot's persuasive effectiveness, (ii) the user's communication style, and (iii) the attribution of mental states and empathy to the robot. In an experiment with 42 participants, two conditions were compared: one with neutral communication and another where the robot provided responses adapted to the emotions expressed by the users. The results show that emotional alignment does not influence users' communication styles or have a persuasive effect. However, it significantly influences attribution of mental states to the robot and its perceived empathy

Problem

• Investigating emotional alignment effects in human-robot interaction
• Examining mental state attribution and empathy toward robots
• Assessing adaptive emotional responses on persuasive effectiveness

Innovation

• Adaptive emotional alignment in robot responses
• Emotionally adapted dialogue using NAO robot
• Significantly influences mental state attribution and empathy