Effect of Robot’s Listening Attitude Change on Self-disclosure of the Elderly

Self-disclosure of life experiences from the viewpoint of integrity is considered beneficial to the psychological health of older adults. It has been shown that people tend to self-disclose more to people they like. Compared to a consistent invariant reward, an improvement in the rewarding behavior of a person has been shown to have a greater positive impact on an individual’s liking for the person. Based on these previous studies, we explored the psychological impact of self-disclosure of integrated life experiences on the elderly and the effect of the change in the robot’s listening attitude on the elderly’s self-disclosure. We conducted an experiment in which 38 elderly participants were asked to self-disclose their life experiences to a robot for approximately 20 min. The participants interacted with either a robot with a consistently positive listening attitude or a robot that initially had a neutral listening attitude that changed to a positive listening attitude. The results showed that self-disclosure of integrated life experiences to the robot had a psychological impact on improving self-esteem. In addition, changes in the robot’s listening attitude were found to promote self-disclosure and enhance its impact on self-esteem.