ABSTRACT
In this section, we explore how the prolonged use of human-like communication media impacts the cultivation of intimate relationships between users. We assess the changes in relationships as individuals talked with each other through either human-like communication media or conventional mobile phones over a period of approximately one month. We evaluated the intimacy of these relationships based on self-disclosed personal information. Our results indicate that using a communication medium with a human-like appearance and a soft material significantly increased self-disclosures compared to just using a typical mobile phone. Interestingly, the amount of self-disclosure exhibited a cyclical variation in our human-like communication media experiment. Furthermore, we propose a potential underlying mechanism for this effect, suggesting that it results from the misattribution of feelings engendered by the intimate distance with the medium to the conversation partner.
