Identifying Opportunities for Relationship-Focused Robotic Interventions in Strained Hierarchical Relationships

Abstract

When disagreements arise in hierarchical relationships, relationship members sometimes prefer conflict management strategies that avoid or quickly end the overt conflict even if the relationship is left in a state of dissatisfaction. Our lab has proposed that a peripheral robotic agent may be able to support these types of relationships during conflict. In this paper, we present the results of an IRB- approved human-robot interaction study that examines how the members of a hierarchical relationship involved in conflict respond to the presence of an unengaged robot. This study serves as a baseline for additional studies. The unengaged robot appears to have a minimal influence on the interaction. The observed conflicts followed the patterns typically described in mediation literature. Our lab previously proposed a computational model to identify weakness and alienation in these relationships. We discuss a partial implementation of this model, and its ability to recognize problems in certain relationships within the data collected. Based on our observations, and the performance of the model’s partial implementation, we suggest considerations that need to be made for an intervening robotic agent.