He who hesitates is lost (...in thoughts over a robot)

J. Wen , A. Stewart , M. Billinghurst , A. Dey , C. Tossell , V. S. Finomore

APAScience

Strong bonds help human teams, but bonding with an expendable robot teammate might be counterproductive, and past work measured empathy only as a one-off at the end of a session. To study empathic behaviour toward a robot over time, the authors built the TEAMMATE simulation system. They found that inducing empathy through a back-story narrative significantly changed participants' decisions in actions that carried consequences for a robot companion — with implications for the performance of human–machine teams.

@inproceedings{wen2018,
  author    = {J. Wen and A. Stewart and M. Billinghurst and A. Dey and C. Tossell and V. S. Finomore},
  title     = {He who hesitates is lost (...in thoughts over a robot)},
  booktitle = {APAScience},
  pages     = {43:1-43:6},
  doi       = {10.1145/3183654.3183703},
  year      = {2018}
}