Informal Caregivers Disclose Increasingly More to a Social Robot Over Time

Abstract

Informal caregivers often struggle in managing to cope with both the stress and the practical demands of the caregiving situation. It has been suggested that digital solutions might be useful to monitor caregivers’ health and well-being, by providing early intervention and support. Given the importance of self-disclosure for psychological health, here we aimed to investigate the potential of employing a social robot for eliciting self-disclosure among informal caregivers over time. We conducted a longitudinal experiment across a five-week period, measuring participants’ disclosure duration (in seconds) and length (in number of words). Our preliminary results show a positive trend where informal caregivers speak for a longer time and share more information in their disclosures to a social robot across the five-week period. These results provide useful evidence supporting the potential deployment of social robots as intervention tools to help provide support for individuals suffering from stress and experiencing challenging life situations.