Abstract
Social robots, which mostly look and behave like humans, are often perceived as somehow alive and treated similar to humans, despite the fact that they are non-living electronic devices. Based on considerations of the uncertainty reduction theory, the question arises what expectancies regarding social robots people have and what sources they use to achieve these expectancies. To receive an in-depth understanding of people’s expectancies regarding social robots and particularly how these expectancies are influenced by people’s experiences with real robots but also with fictional robots from media, thirteen semi-structured interviews and a quantitative online study (n = 433) were conducted. Results indicate that people’s experiences with robots in the media lead to high expectations regarding the skills of robots, which in turn increase people’s general expectancies regarding social robots being part of the society as well as their personal lives. Furthermore, knowledge of negatively perceived fictional robots increases negative expectancies of robots becoming a threat to humans, while technical affinity reduces general robot anxiety.
Highlights
A social robot can be described as “an autonomous or semi-autonomous robot that interacts and communicates with humans by following the behavioral norms expected by the people with whom the robot is intended to interact” (Bartneck and Forlizzi, 2004, p. 592)
It is challenging for people to assign a clear category to social robots (Kahn et al, 2011) since they often look and behave like a human or at least like some kind of living being, even though they are non-living electronic devices
By means of the conducted interviews, people’s expectations regarding social robots in their personal daily lives and regarding social robots having own emotions and intentions were examined more deeply. These expectations were systematically compared to their preferences, which has not been examined this way before
Summary
A social robot can be described as “an autonomous or semi-autonomous robot that interacts and communicates with humans by following the behavioral norms expected by the people with whom the robot is intended to interact” (Bartneck and Forlizzi, 2004, p. 592). A social robot can be described as “an autonomous or semi-autonomous robot that interacts and communicates with humans by following the behavioral norms expected by the people with whom the robot is intended to interact” Great Expectations (Reeves and Nass, 1996), these behavioral and physical cues play a key role in people’s reactions toward media, which often rather resemble a reaction to a real person than to an electronic device. Against this background, the question arises which interhuman, social processes apply to interactions with social robots
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