To design social robots to effectively promote health behavior change, it is essential to understand how people respond to various health communication strategies employed by these robots. This study examines the effectiveness of two types of social control strategies from a social robot, relationship-focused strategies (emphasizing relational consequences) and target-focused strategies (emphasizing health consequences), in encouraging people to reduce sedentary behavior. A two-session lab experiment was conducted (n = 135), where participants first played a game with a robot, followed by the robot persuading them to stand up and move using one of the strategies. Half of the participants joined a second session to have a repeated interaction with the robot. Results showed that relationship-focused strategies motivated participants to stay active longer. Repeated sessions did not strengthen participants' relationship with the robot, but those who felt more attached to the robot responded more actively to the target-focused strategies. These findings offer valuable insights for designing persuasive strategies for social robots in health communication contexts.

In cognitive science and social psychology Warmth and Competence are considered fundamental dimensions of social There is a large body of work evaluating the perception of cognition, i.e., the social judgment of our peers [1], and interaction with robots. In this paper we are interested [7]. Fiske et al. provide evidence that those dimensions are in understanding which metrics indicate human preferences, universal and reliable for social judgment across stimuli, cultures i.e., which robot a person would choose to interact with and time [1]. People perceived as warm and competent again, if given a choice. Agreeing upon a metric for this elicit uniformly positive emotions [1], are in general more in human-robot interaction (HRI) would provide important favored, and experience more positive interaction with their benefits [2], but raises the question which metric we should peers [6]. The opposite is true for people scoring low on use? The human engagement in an interaction could serve these dimensions, meaning they experience more negative as an indicator for their preference.