Huggable Communication Medium Maintains Level of Trust during Conversation Game

Abstract

There have been several attempts in recent years to develop a remote communication device using sensory modalities other than speech that would induce a user's positive experience with his/her conversation partner. Specifically, <i>Hugvie</i> is a human-shaped pillow as well as a remote communication device enabling users to combine a hugging experience with telecommunication to improve the quality of remote communication. The present research is based on the hypothesis that using <i>Hugvie</i> maintains users' level of trust toward their conversation partners in situations prone to suspicion. The level of trust felt toward other remote game players was compared between participants using <i>Hugvie</i> and those using a basic communication device while playing a modified version of <i>Werewolf</i>, a conversation-based game, designed to evaluate trust. Although there are always winners and losers in the regular version of <i>Werewolf</i>, the rules were modified to generate a possible scenario in which no enemy was present among the players and all players would win if they trusted each other. We examined the effect of using <i>Hugvie</i> while playing <i>Werewolf</i> on players' level of trust toward each other and our results demonstrated that in those using <i>Hugvie</i>, the level of trust toward other players was maintained.