Does the Safety Demand Characteristic Influence Human-Robot Interaction?

Abstract

While it is increasingly common to have robots in real-world environments, many Human-Robot Interaction studies are conducted in laboratory settings. Evidence shows that laboratory settings have the potential to skew participants’ feelings of safety. This paper probes the consequences of this Safety Demand Characteristic and its impacts on the field of Human-Robot Interaction. We collected survey and video data from 19 participants who had varied consent forms describing different levels of risk for participating in the study. Participants were given a distractor task to prevent them from knowing the purpose of the study. We hypothesized that participants would feel less safe with the changed consent form and that participants’ views of the robot would change depending on the version of consent. The results showed that features of the robot were viewed by participants differently depending on the perceived risks of participating in the study, warranting further inspection.