Social balancing effect of eye contact

How humans recognize others is a central topic in both psychology and the field of robot communication. In this paper, we address the issue of such social cognition in a triadic situation since it has not yet been well explored in psychological studies although it is not negligible in daily situations. Classical Heider´s balance theory has been suggested in that there are balanced states of triadic relationships that are perceived as comfortable by persons who are involved in them. However, whether, or how, such balanced states tend to be formed has not been well explored. In this paper, we investigate what we call ´social balancing effect´ of synchronized nonverbal behavior: social relationships can be attracted to a balanced state due to the synchronized behavior between two agents. In this paper, we conduct an experiment in a conversational interaction among two humans and an android and report that observing eye contacts between the robot and a confederate affected the subject´s recognition of the android as attracted to a balanced state.