From Small Talk to Rapport: Exploring Robot Self-Disclosure in Collaborative Tasks
Robotics
Summary
The authors studied how robots talking about themselves (self-disclosure) affects teamwork with people. They tested a robot that either shared a lot about itself or only a little while working with humans. Surprisingly, when the robot shared less, people shared more and felt like they worked better together. This was especially true for people who had worked with robots before. The authors suggest that simply making robots share more isn’t always the best way to build connection or teamwork.
human-robot interactionself-disclosuresmall talkrapportLLM-driven robotindustrial manipulatorteamworksocial connection
Authors
Kaitlynn Taylor Pineda, Anvii Mishra, Brian Chien, Angela Guo, Toluwani Williams, Ziang Xiao, Chien-Ming Huang
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.