Imagining Shared Experiences With Robots Predicts Greater Expected Social Connection Through Shared Reality

Although the integration of social robots into everyday life is still at an early stage, understanding what facilitates social connection with robots has received increasing research attention. The current research examined whether merely imagining shared experiences with robots increases people's expected social connection with robots, the role of expected shared reality as an underlying mechanism, and the influence of social exclusion on expected shared reality. Across three experiments, participants imagined sharing (vs. not sharing) the experience of eating chocolates with a humanoid robot that ostensibly possessed inner states. In Studies 1a and 1b, when participants imagined sharing an experience with the robot, they expected a greater sense of shared reality, and in turn, expected to feel greater social connection with the robot. In Study 2, socially excluded participants expected to experience greater shared reality with the robot than socially included participants. Together, these findings suggest that imagining shared experiences with robots may serve to foster a sense of social connection with robots by increasing expectations of shared reality.