Anshin as a concept of subjective well-being between humans and robots in Japan

In this article, we aim to discover the basic factors for determining Anshin of humanoids from the viewpoint of potential users and to develop a new psychological scale to measure the degree of Anshin quantitatively. Anshin is a prevailing concept of subjective well-being that Japanese people feel toward their life with artificial products including service robots. To examine the factors that determine Anshin of humanoids from a lay person's perspective, we studied the responses of 919 Japanese who observed movies of 11 humanoids and then freely described their impressions about what Anshin of each humanoid meant to them. The descriptions were classified into several categories to develop the items of a new scale. Subsequently, 2624 different Japanese participants evaluated the same 11 humanoids using the new scale. Factor analysis revealed five factors of Anshin: Comfort, Performance, Peace of mind, Controllability, and Robot-likeness. The usability and implications of the new scale are discussed.