Cooperative relationships between humans and agents are becoming more important for the social coexistence of anthropomorphic agents, including virtual agents and robots. One way to improve the relationship between humans and agents is for humans to empathize with the agents. Empathy can help humans become more accepting of agents. In this study, we focus on the IKEA effect in creating agents and investigate human empathy toward agents through relationships with others in the same space. For this reason, this study used a robot assembly task in which two participants cooperatively build the same robot or individually their own robot. We conducted experiments to examine the relationship between participants, the IKEA effect in creating an agent, and the influence of the empathy object on human empathy. The results showed that the IKEA effect promoted empathy toward the agent regardless of the relationship between participants. On the other hand, there was no significant difference in empathy from one participant to another before and after the task. These results indicate that regardless of the relationship between participants in the same space, the creation of an agent can promote empathy toward the agent.

翻译：人类与智能体之间的合作关系对于虚拟智能体及机器人等拟人化智能体的社会共存愈发重要。改善人机关系的途径之一是人类对智能体产生共情。共情能促使人类更易接纳智能体。本研究聚焦于智能体创建过程中的宜家效应，探讨人类通过对同一空间中他人关系的认知如何对智能体产生共情。为此，我们设计了一项机器人组装任务：两名参与者协同组装同一台机器人，或各自独立组装自己的机器人。通过实验分析参与者之间的关系、智能体创建中的宜家效应，以及共情对象对人类共情的影响。结果表明，无论参与者之间关系如何，宜家效应均能促进对智能体的共情。另一方面，任务前后参与者之间的共情水平未出现显著差异。这些发现表明，无论同一空间中参与者之间存在何种关系，创建智能体的行为本身即可促进对智能体的共情。