Happiness improves perceptions and game performance in an escape room, whereas anger motivates compliance with instructions from a robot agent

Emotions have been discovered to have critical impacts on human-robot interaction (HRI), but research has focused more on robots’ emotion expressions than user emotions. The present study investigated the impact of users’ emotions (happiness and anger) on their perceptions and trust toward robots, perceived workload, and task performance in an escape room with a robot agent. Forty-six college students participated in our study. The results suggested that happy participants rated the robot agent as significantly more likable, safer, and more comfortable than angry participants. Angry participants complied significantly more with the robot agent’s instructions than happy participants, but fewer succeeded. Among the participants who failed to escape the room, angry participants showed significantly higher cognitive trust in the robot than happy participants. The results underscored the importance of user emotions in shaping user perceptions and trust in robots, providing valuable theoretical and practical implications for emotions in HRI.