The DOI matches its Crossref record; 9 of the 9 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Loneliness makes the heart grow fonder (of robots) — On the effects of loneliness on psychological anthropomorphism
Abstract
Sociality motivation represents an essential driving force for human behavior and well-being. If the need for affiliation is not satisfied and social interaction partners are unavailable, people might use an alternative strategy: Nonhuman entities, such as pets or religious deities are humanized and turned into social agents. We tested this notion in the context of social robotics and investigated whether activating feelings of loneliness would affect perceptions of anthropomorphism. Results showed that lonely people anthropomorphized the robot FloBi more than participants in the control group. Thus, importantly, users' motivational states need to be considered in the context of human-robot interaction (HRI) as they clearly affect judgments of the robotic interaction partner.
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“Because loneliness can increase the tendency to anthropomorphize147, it may be an important link between observed associations between loneliness and LLM-CB use (e.g., see Fig. 2).”
From A scoping review on the mental health harms of LLM-based chatbots (2026) · cites this paper as [147]
Citations
Cites
The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037//0033-2909.117.3.497 · Cited by 23,245
Gray, H. M., Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2007) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1134475 · Cited by 2,342 · cited 1×
“, the capacity to feel pain, hunger, or to make plans) adapted from [9].”
BackgroundWhy Does Social Exclusion Hurt? The Relationship Between Social and Physical Pain.
MacDonald, G., & Leary, M. R. (2005) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.131.2.202 · Cited by 1,712
Does social exclusion motivate interpersonal reconnection? Resolving the “porcupine problem”
Maner, J. K., DeWall, C. N., Baumeister, R. F., & Schaller, M. (2007) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.92.1.42 · Cited by 1,165
Getting a cue: the need to belong and enhanced sensitivity to social cues
Pickett, C. L., Gardner, W. L., & Knowles, M. (2004) · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · doi:10.1177/0146167203262085 · Cited by 862
Epley, N., Akalis, S., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2008) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02056.x · Cited by 632
Attributing and denying humanness to others
Haslam, N., Loughnan, S., Kashima, Y., & Bain, P. G. (2008) · European Review of Social Psychology · doi:10.1080/10463280801981645 · Cited by 332
Eyssel, F., Kuchenbrandt, D., & Bobinger, S. (2011) · ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) · doi:10.1145/1957656.1957673 · Cited by 161
Self-citationEyssel, F., & Kuchenbrandt, D. (2011) · IEEE RO-MAN · doi:10.1109/roman.2011.6005233 · Cited by 29
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Interactions with robots: the truths we reveal about ourselves
Broadbent, E. (2017) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010416-043958 · Cited by 547
“This hypothesis was supported by research showing that lonely people had a greater tendency to anthropomorphize a humanlike robot than nonlonely people (Eyssel & Reich 2013).”
ResultHuman-Robot Interaction: An Introduction
Bartneck, C., Belpaeme, T., Eyssel, F., Kanda, T., Keijsers, M., & Šabanović, S. (2020) · doi:10.1017/9781108676649 · Cited by 211
Self-citationMental State Attribution to Robots: A Systematic Review of Conceptions, Methods, and Findings
Thellman, S., de Graaf, M. M. A., & Ziemke, T. (2022) · ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction · doi:10.1145/3526112 · Cited by 185
“…that anthropomorphism is a broader concept, some authors disqualify mind-unrelated aspects of anthropomorphism by referring to mental state attribution using terms such as “psychological anthropomorphism” [Eyssel and Reich 2013; Kamide et al. 2013; Salem et al. 2011; Trovato and Eyssel 2017].”
BackgroundBrouwer, A., & Carhart-Harris, R. L. (2020) · Journal of Psychopharmacology · doi:10.1177/0269881120959637 · Cited by 174
“…sensed presence (Geiger, 2009; Steffen and Coyle, 2010), and loneliness has also been linked with facets of magical thinking such as anthropomorphization (Bartz et al., 2016; Epley et al., 2008; Eyssel and Reich, 2013), which is a feature of religious belief (Guthrie and Guthrie, 1995).”
BackgroundObrenovic, B., Gu, X., Wang, G., Godinić, D., & Jakhongirov, I. (2024) · AI & Society · doi:10.1007/s00146-024-01889-0 · Cited by 171
Metadata
- Authors
- Eyssel, F., & Reich, N.
- Affiliations
- Bielefeld University (DE)
- ORCID
- Eyssel, Friederike
- Venue
- 2013 8th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)
- Publisher
- IEEE
- Published
- 2013-03
- Pages
- 121-122
- OpenAlex
- W4250223980
- Semantic Scholar
- d0bf826cd2d0cfe729913bd465843343b0f83ebb
- Cited by
- 101
- References
- 9
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 22 · 2019: 3 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 1 · 2013: 2
- FWCI
- 6.72
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › AI in Service Interactions
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Keywords
- loneliness, anthropomorphism, social robots, human-robot interaction, need for affiliation, robot perception, motivational states
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