Abstract
Viewing people and other animals elicits social and emotional processes. Similarly, robots are sometimes seen as social agents, but limited emotion-priming research for robots exists. Fifty-nine participants completed three sessions of an emotion recognition task, primed with a dog, robot or random motion (control) video. There was no significant effect from exposure to dog videos (or control) on emotional recognition; however, participants performed significantly worse following robot exposure. A follow-up study of 184 participants) included new videos of all stimuli. Similarly, no significant effects occurred after dog exposure, but robot priming decreased performance. Robot priming appears to worsen emotion recognition, which is interesting. This may be due to motor resonance priming - mimicking observed behavior and actions - or due to pre-existing stereotypes of robots and perceived experimental demands. Further studies should include controlled variations of all videos and live interactions to compare priming effects on emotion recognition.
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