Learning with Educational Companion Robots? Toward Attitudes on Education Robots, Predictors of Attitudes, and Application Potentials for Education Robots

Abstract

Previous research on attitudes toward robots has emphasized the aspect of cultural differences regarding the acceptance of social robots in everyday life. Existing work has also focused on the importance of various other factors (e.g., demographic variables, interest in science and technology, prior robot experience) that predict robot acceptance. Specific robot types like service or healthcare robots have also been investigated. Nevertheless, more research is needed to substantiate the empirical evidence on the role of culture, robot type, and other predictors when researching attitudes toward robots. We did so by conducting a survey on attitudes toward education robots in the German context. Besides, in the present research, we investigated predictors of attitudes toward education robots. Contrary to previous findings, our results suggest that German respondents have neutral attitudes toward education robots. However, our data support the notion of relative reluctance to engage in learning processes that include robots. Regarding demographic variables and personality dispositions, our results show that gender, age, need for cognition , and technology commitment significantly predicted people’s attitudes. Concerning potential areas of application, respondents could picture using education robots in domains related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and rejected education robots in fields of arts and social sciences.