Persuasive Social Robot Using Reward Power over Repeated Instances of Persuasion

This paper presents a user-study with Emys social robot that aims to persuade subjects to select a less-desirable choice. In this study, within a game scenario, Emys attempts to use its social power resources, specifically reward power, to persuade the user to select an alternative such that the user indicates less interest in it. This persuasion attempt is repeated over three times to investigate this effect within repeated persuasion instances. The study consists of three conditions: no/low/high reward. The results indicated that the higher reward does not necessarily lead to higher persuasion and the effect of social power does not decay over repeated persuasion instances.