The media equation: how people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive Technology
Rhetorical robots: making robots more effective speakers using linguistic cues of expertise
Proceedings of the 8th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction
On Being a Peer: What Persuasive Technology for Teaching Can Gain from Social Robotics in Education
International Journal of Conceptual Structures and Smart Applications
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Persuasive technology can take the form of a social agent that persuades people to change behavior or attitudes. However, like any persuasive technology, persuasive social agents might trigger psychological reactance, which can lead to restoration behavior. The current study investigated whether interacting with a persuasive robot can cause psychological reactance. Additionally, we investigated whether goal congruency plays a role in psychological reactance. Participants programmed a washing machine while a robot gave threatening advice. Confirming expectations, participants experienced more psychological reactance when receiving high-threatening advice compared to low-threatening advice. Moreover, when the robot gave high-threatening advice and expressed an incongruent goal, participants reported the highest level of psychological reactance (on an anger measure). Finally, high-threatening advice led to more restoration, and this relationship was partially mediated by psychological reactance. Overall, results imply that under certain circumstances persuasive technology can trigger opposite effects, especially when people have incongruent goal intentions.