Social Robots as Social Proxies for Fostering Connection and Empathy Towards Humanity

Despite living in an increasingly connected world, social isolation is a prevalent issue today. While social robots have been explored as tools to enhance social connection through companionship, their potential as asynchronous social platforms for fostering connection towards humanity has received less attention. In this work, we introduce the design of a social support companion that facilitates the exchange of emotionally relevant stories and scaffolds reflection to enhance feelings of connection via five design dimensions. We investigate how social robots can serve as "social proxies" facilitating human stories, passing stories from other human narrators to the user. To this end, we conduct a real-world deployment of 40 robot stations in users' homes over the course of two weeks. Through thematic analysis of user interviews, we find that social proxy robots can foster connection towards other people's experiences via mechanisms such as identifying connections across stories or offering diverse perspectives. We present design guidelines from our study insights on the use of social robot systems that serve as social platforms to enhance human empathy and connection.