@inproceedings { leite10, abstract = {The ability of artificial companions (virtual agents or robots) to establish meaningful relationships with users is still limited. In humans, a key aspect of such ability is empathy, often seen as the basis of social cooperation and pro-social behaviour. In this paper, we present a study where a social robot with empathic capabilities interacts with two users playing a chess game against each other. During the game, the agent behaves in an empathic manner towards one of the players and in a neutral way towards the other. In an experiment conducted with 40 participants, results showed that users to whom the robot was empathic provided higher ratings in terms of companionship.}, affiliation = {INESC-ID and Instituto Superior Técnico, Av. Prof. Cavaco Silva, Taguspark, 2744-016 Porto Salvo, Portugal}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents}, editor = {Allbeck, Jan and Badler, Norman and Bickmore, Timothy and Pelachaud, Catherine and Safonova, Alla}, isbn = {}, keywords = {Affective Computing;Social Robotic Companions;}, month = {9}, note = {10.1007/978-3-642-15892-6_32}, pages = {315-321}, publisher = {Springer Berlin / Heidelberg}, series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science}, title = {”Why Can’t We Be Friends?” An Empathic Game Companion for Long-Term Interaction}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15892-6_32}, volume = {6356}, year = {2010}, author = {Iolanda Leite and Samuel Mascarenhas and André Pereira and Carlos Martinho and Rui Prada and Ana Paiva} }

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