# A Robotic Positive Psychology Coach to Improve College Students' Wellbeing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.03829 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03829/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 8 Sep 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Advancing Social Intelligence in AI Agents: Technical Challenges and Open Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.11023/) (2024)
- [Social Human Robot Embodied Conversation (SHREC) Dataset: Benchmarking Foundational Models' Social Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13898/) (2025)
- [Who Owns The Robot?: Four Ethical and Socio-technical Questions about Wellbeing Robots in the Real World through Community Engagement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02624/) (2025)
- [Supporting Productivity Skill Development in College Students through Social Robot Coaching: A Proof-of-Concept](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.01105/) (2025)
- [The Supportiveness-Safety Tradeoff in LLM Well-Being Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04487/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

A significant number of college students suffer from mental health issues that impact their physical, social, and occupational outcomes. Various scalable technologies have been proposed in order to mitigate the negative impact of mental health disorders. However, the evaluation for these technologies, if done at all, often reports mixed results on improving users' mental health. We need to better understand the factors that align a user's attributes and needs with technology-based interventions for positive outcomes. In psychotherapy theory, therapeutic alliance and rapport between a therapist and a client is regarded as the basis for therapeutic success. In prior works, social robots have shown the potential to build rapport and a working alliance with users in various settings. In this work, we explore the use of a social robot coach to deliver positive psychology interventions to college students living in on-campus dormitories. We recruited 35 college students to participate in our study and deployed a social robot coach in their room. The robot delivered daily positive psychology sessions among other useful skills like delivering the weather forecast, scheduling reminders, etc. We found a statistically significant improvement in participants' psychological wellbeing, mood, and readiness to change behavior for improved wellbeing after they completed the study. Furthermore, students' personality traits were found to have a significant association with intervention efficacy. Analysis of the post-study interview revealed students' appreciation of the robot's companionship and their concerns for privacy.