Regulating Emotion with Body Ownership Transfer

In this study, we experimentally examined whether changes in the facial expressions of teleoperated androids can affect and regulate their operators’ emotion, based on the facial feedback theory of emotion and the phenomenon of body ownership transfer to the robot. Twenty-six Japanese participants conversed with an experimenter through a robot in a situation where the participants were induced to feel anger, and during the conversation, the android’s facial expression was changed according to a pre-programmed scheme. The results showed that facial feedback from the android did occur. Moreover, a comparison of the results of two groups of participants, one of which operated the robot and the second did not, showed that this facial feedback from the android robot occurred only when the participants operated the robot, and that when an operator could effectively operate the robot, his/her emotional states were more affected by the facial expression change of the robot.