Kawaii emotions in presentations: Viewing a physical touch affects perception of affiliative feelings of others toward an object

PLoS One. 2022 Mar 24;17(3):e0264736. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0264736. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

We investigated how a presenter's touching behaviors of an object during its explanation affect the observer's perceived feelings of kawaii, a Japanese word that means "cute," toward the object and the presenter. We conducted a face-to-face experiment with a robot presenter as well as a web survey experiment with both robot and human presenters. Based on the phenomenon that people more firmly touch an object when their perceived kawaii feeling is overwhelmingly strong, we investigated the effects of touching behavior with emphasized styles. First, we conducted a face-to-face experiment with a robot presenter where participants observed their presentations about an object to explain its characteristics. The results showed that participants who observed the robot's touch behaviors perceived the object to be more kawaii and thought that the robot also felt the object was more kawaii. On the other hand, the results did not effectively show any increase in the participant's feelings of kawaii toward the robot or the emphasized touch style. Based on these results, we next conducted a web survey experiment to investigate whether such knowledge about touching effects is applicable for human presenters. The results resembled those obtained when the presenter was a robot, i.e., viewing a touch behavior increased both the presenter's perceived feelings of kawaii toward the object and the participant's feelings of kawaii toward it. These results suggest that viewing the touch behaviors of others influenced the perceived emotional feelings toward both presenters and objects.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Emotions
  • Humans
  • Physical Examination
  • Touch Perception*
  • Touch*

Grants and funding

This work was partially supported by JST CREST Grant, Number JPMJCR18A1, Japan, JST PRESTO Grant Number JPMJPR1851, Japan, and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP19J01290 and JP21H04897. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.