POIROT: Investigating Direct Tangible vs. Digitally Mediated Interaction and Attitude Moderation in Multi-party Murder Mystery Games

2026-03-09

AI Summary

This study investigates how interaction modality—physical versus digital mediation—affects narrative immersion in multiplayer murder mystery games, and how users’ preexisting negative attitudes toward robots moderate this effect. Employing a robotic game host that delivers clues through both modalities, the research integrates a custom robot system with multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and multilevel linear modeling (MLM), complemented by qualitative interviews. Results reveal that physical interaction is not universally superior: participants with high negative attitudes toward robots exhibited significantly reduced immersion in the physical condition, whereas the digital interface provided a social buffer for anxious users, enhancing interaction inclusivity. These findings underscore a critical mechanism in human–robot interaction design—namely, the necessity of aligning interaction modalities with users’ psychological predispositions.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Human-Robot Interaction
• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Data quality aspects of human-annotated datasets

Abstract

As social robots take on increasingly complex roles like game masters (GMs) in multi-party games, the expectation that physicality universally enhances user experience remains debated. This study challenges the "one-size-fits-all" view of tangible interaction by identifying a critical boundary condition: users' Negative Attitudes towards Robots (NARS). In a between-subjects experiment (N = 67), a custom-built robot GM facilitated a multi-party murder mystery game (MMG) by delivering clues either through direct tangible interaction or a digitally mediated interface. Baseline multivariate analysis (MANOVA) showed no significant main effect of delivery modality, confirming that tangibility alone does not guarantee superior engagement. However, primary analysis using multilevel linear models (MLM) revealed a reliable moderation: participants high in NARS experienced markedly lower narrative immersion under tangible delivery, whereas those with low NARS scores showed no such decrement. Qualitative findings further illuminate this divergence: tangibility provides novelty and engagement for some but imposes excessive proxemic friction for anxious users, for whom the digital interface acts as a protective social buffer. These results advance a conditional model of HRI and emphasize the necessity for adaptive systems that can tailor interaction modalities to user predispositions.

Problem

• tangible interaction
• digital mediation
• Negative Attitudes towards Robots
• narrative immersion
• human-robot interaction

Innovation

• tangible interaction
• Negative Attitudes toward Robots (NARS)
• moderation effect
• adaptive HRI
• social buffering