Loving-kindness and walking meditation with a robot: Countering negative mood by stimulating creativity

Young adults undergoing psychological changes are particularly vulnerable. Recent social isolation impedes interpersonal help while stress from family, school, work, and society has brought negative effects on mental health, even in otherwise healthy young adults. Recent research has shown that daily creativity contributes to well-being. To circumvent issues of contamination, we tried a NAO robot guiding a Loving-kindness Meditation (LKM) and Walking Meditation (WM). By improving mental states (i.e. positive valence and state openness), we stimulated creative behavior to reduce negative mood. Participants (N = 142) were healthy individuals, aged between 18 and 34, joining a one-time laboratory experiment. They responded to two rounds of questionnaires, with a 10 min intervention guided by audio or a NAO robot in between each round. A control group with participants with no treatment (i.e. taking a 10 min rest) was added for comparison. Both audio-guided LKM and WM successfully evoked state openness, with the former also exerting a positive effect on valence. Valence and state openness were positively correlated, and both were associated with a higher willingness to create. With positive valence, young adults likely perform better on convergent thinking. The result may potentially lead to negative mood reduction. The discussion emphasizes the importance of designing specific characteristics of social robots in accordance with the task's context.