Investigating politeness strategies and their persuasiveness for a Robotic Elderly Assistant

Abstract

This work is targeted towards the development of a Robotic Elderly Assistant (REA) system that provides assistance in the form of recommendations to support single-living elderly people in their domestic environment. To avoid potential face threats the REA should be as polite as possible whilst keeping a certain persuasiveness to promote its recommendations. This paper investigates different verbalizations of the REA’s recommendations regarding their perceived politeness as well as their persuasiveness. We present the results of a laboratory study with younger adults and a user study with the inhabitants of a retirement home. Results suggest that the different politeness strategies reflected different levels of politeness in both studies, while their perceived persuasiveness needs further investigation in the domain of elderly care.