It´s not polite to point Generating socially-appropriate deictic behaviors towards people

Pointing behaviors are used for referring to objects and people in everyday interactions, but the behaviors used for referring to objects are not necessarily polite or socially appropriate for referring to humans. In this study, we confirm that although people would point precisely to an object to indicate where it is, they were hesitant to do so when pointing to another person. We propose a model for generating socially-appropriate deictic behaviors in a robot. The model is based on balancing two factors: understandability and social appropriateness. In an experiment with a robot in a shopping mall, we found that the robot´s deictic behavior was perceived as more polite, more natural, and better overall when using our model, compared with a model considering understandability alone.