A Systematic Review of Attitudes, Anxiety, Acceptance, and Trust Towards Social Robots

Stanislava Naneva,Tony J Prescott,Marina Sarda Gou,Thomas L Webb

doi:10.1007/s12369-020-00659-4

Stanislava Naneva, Tony J Prescott + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-020-00659-4

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Abstract

As social robots become more common, there is a need to understand how people perceive and interact with such technology. This systematic review seeks to estimate people’s attitudes toward, trust in, anxiety associated with, and acceptance of social robots; as well as factors that are associated with these beliefs. Ninety-seven studies were identified with a combined sample of over 13,000 participants and a standardized score was computed for each in order to represent the valence (positive, negative, or neutral) and magnitude (on a scale from 1 to − 1) of people’s beliefs about robots. Potential moderating factors such as the robots’ domain of application and design, the type of exposure to the robot, and the characteristics of potential users were also investigated. The findings suggest that people generally have positive attitudes towards social robots and are willing to interact with them. This finding may challenge some of the existing doubt surrounding the adoption of robotics in social domains of application but more research is needed to fully understand the factors that influence attitudes.

Highlights

According to a widely-reported large-scale survey [1], a substantial proportion of EU citizens have negative attitudes toward the use of robots within healthcare and other fields that are traditionally dominated by humans
Data on people’s acceptance of, attitudes toward, anxiety associated with, and trust in social robots was obtained from k 97 studies published between 2005 and early 2019 in scientific journals (52%) or in conference proceedings (45%), with only three studies coming from alternative sources
Given the popularity of the Negative Attitudes towards Robots Scale (NARS; [10]) in human–robot interaction (HRI) research, seventeen studies (30%) used the full scale or subscales to measure participants’ affective attitudes. We categorised both the NARS-S1 and NARS-S3 subscales as measures of affective attitudes, as the items enquire how people expect to feel when they interact with social robots

Summary

Introduction

According to a widely-reported large-scale survey [1], a substantial proportion of EU citizens have negative attitudes toward the use of robots within healthcare and other fields that are traditionally dominated by humans. There have been suggestions of a growing anxiety among the public that automation, enabled by robotics, will lead to a significant loss of jobs [2, 3]. Stanislava Naneva and Marina Sarda Gou have contributed to this work. B Marina Sarda Gou tudes do not consistently predict behaviour, they are thought to influence people’s behavioural intentions [5] and may predict the uptake and use of robots alongside other variables such as anxiety, trust, and intention to use and engage with robots. An improved understanding of people’s attitudes toward robots should help to inform future research, development, and deployment of robotics in various domains of public and private life

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