UU research: do we get less anxious after cuddling with a robot?

Imagine you're on a roller coaster and the moment of descent is almost upon you. In a flash, you grab the hand of the person next to you. This brief touch makes the fear a little more bearable. But does it matter whose hand it is? Could it just as easily be a stranger's? Or perhaps even a robot's?

These questions were central to a study conducted by the experimental psychologist Anouk Keizer, from Utrecht University, and her colleagues at the Dutch Touch Society. They teamed up with researchers from several universities to develop a cuddly robot and test it at the Lowlands festival (see video below). The researchers showed participants a short, scary film and then measured whether they felt less stressed when holding the hand of another person or of a cuddly robot with an artificial heartbeat.

This research into touch and well-being was nominated for the Klokhuis Science Prize, an initiative by the educational TV show Het Klokhuis. The prize aims to make Dutch scientific research more attractive and accessible to children.

Keizer explains that this is an important topic for children, one that has been receiving increasing attention in recent years. "It's about the questions: how do you ask for consent? How do you give consent? How do you set your own boundaries, and how do you respect those of others?' According to Keizer, these questions often refer to negative touching, but it is also important to talk about how people want to be touched and how they can ask for that.

Keizer and her team consider it a great honour that Klokhuis has considered their study relevant for children. "It's a great way to teach children about an important topic, and also show them what science can be about. It can also be about human behaviour. Science is more than just people in white lab coats." 

Can a robot replace a human being?
"In the future, we may well have all kinds of robots in our homes. How do we shape our contact with those robots? Can a robot replace human touch?" As an example, Keizer mentions an already existing sleep robot that has positive effects on human mental health. It is a capsule-shaped cushion that helps people fall asleep more easily. "Its effect is comparable to a pet, such as a cat lying on your lap, whose warmth, breathing and purring you can feel."

According to Keizer, it is important to know that the sensation of your arm touching a table travels along different nerve pathways and reaches a different area of the brain than the gentle touch of another human being. "Somewhere in our evolution, we've developed a special system for processing human touch, which goes to show the importance of human touch to us."

Afraid of the dentist
Keizer and her colleagues are currently analysing the results of the Lowlands study. "We've noticed that people really like robots, but scientists have not yet been able to mimic human touch using any kind of technology. That can only be done through real human contact."

She and her team are not necessarily in favour of robots replacing humans. They are mostly interested in finding out whether that could happen and, if so, how people differ in their reactions to robots. "Take people who are afraid of the dentist, for example. Why do some feel more at ease if they hold the assistant's hand, while others don't?"

Hungry for touch
According to Keizer, around 75 percent of people would like to be touched more. How can that number be so high? "Some lack touch for practical reasons, such as students who have just moved to another city and are far away from family and friends," she says. But Keizer also suspects that our society has become much more individualistic, leading to greater physical distance.

She also thinks that experiencing a hunger for touch may be useful. "If we continuously have it, it acts as a kind of motivation to continue interacting with others. When we say that 75 percent of people long for more touch, it sounds like a crisis, but perhaps that's just a useful feature. We would like to investigate that further."

The winner of the Klokhuis Science Prize will be announced at the InScience Film Festival in Nijmegen on 8 March. You can still vote for Keizer's research, titled Hand in Hand Against Tension. The winner will receive their own Klokhuis episode.

The experiment at LowLands Festival: