Saramandi, Alkistis;
Au, Yee Ki;
Koukoutsakis, Athanasios;
Zheng, Caroline Yan;
Godwin, Adrian;
Bianchi-Berthouze, Nadia;
Jewitt, Carey;
... Fotopoulou, Aikaterini; + view all
(2024)
Tactile emoticons: Conveying social emotions and intentions with manual and robotic tactile feedback during social media communications.
PLoS One
, 19
(6)
, Article e0304417. 10.1371/journal.pone.0304417.
Preview |
Text
Fotopoulou_Tactile emoticons_VoR.pdf Download (1MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Touch offers important non-verbal possibilities for socioaffective communication. Yet most digital communications lack capabilities regarding exchanging affective tactile messages (tactile emoticons). Additionally, previous studies on tactile emoticons have not capitalised on knowledge about the affective effects of certain mechanoreceptors in the human skin, e.g., the C-Tactile (CT) system. Here, we examined whether gentle manual stroking delivered in velocities known to optimally activate the CT system (defined as 'tactile emoticons'), during lab-simulated social media communications could convey increased feelings of social support and other prosocial intentions compared to (1) either stroking touch at CT sub-optimal velocities, or (2) standard visual emoticons. Participants (N = 36) felt more social intent with CT-optimal compared to sub-optimal velocities, or visual emoticons. In a second, preregistered study (N = 52), we investigated whether combining visual emoticons with tactile emoticons, this time delivered at CT-optimal velocities by a soft robotic device, could enhance the perception of prosocial intentions and affect participants' physiological measures (e.g., skin conductance rate) in comparison to visual emoticons alone. Visuotactile emoticons conveyed more social intent overall and in anxious participants affected physiological measures more than visual emoticons. The results suggest that emotional social media communications can be meaningfully enhanced by tactile emoticons.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Tactile emoticons: Conveying social emotions and intentions with manual and robotic tactile feedback during social media communications |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0304417 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304417 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2024 Saramandi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | Humans, Social Media, Male, Female, Emotions, Adult, Robotics, Touch, Young Adult, Intention, Touch Perception, Communication |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10193587 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
