Abstract
Since social robots are rapidly advancing and thus increasingly entering people’s everyday environments, interactions with robots also progress. For these interactions to be designed and executed successfully, this study considers insights of attribution theory to explore the circumstances under which people attribute responsibility for the robot’s actions to the robot. In an experimental online study with a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects design (N = 394), people read a vignette describing the social robot Pepper either as an assistant or a competitor and its feedback, which was either positive or negative during a subsequently executed quiz, to be generated autonomously by the robot or to be pre-programmed by programmers. Results showed that feedback believed to be autonomous leads to more attributed agency, responsibility, and competence to the robot than feedback believed to be pre-programmed. Moreover, the more agency is ascribed to the robot, the better the evaluation of its sociability and the interaction with it. However, only the valence of the feedback affects the evaluation of the robot’s sociability and the interaction with it directly, which points to the occurrence of a fundamental attribution error.
Highlights
Social robots are rapidly evolving and with the advancements of this technology, they are increasingly taking over tasks for which interacting with humans is an essential necessity
International Journal of Social Robotics devices take over the role of an assistant or service provider, positive feedback is expected and negative feedback leads to a worsened evaluation of the device [7, 8]
Since previous research showed that a social robot is evaluated differently depending on whether it is framed before as a threatening competitor or a helpful assistant [15], we aim to examine whether the feedback-giving social robot is perceived differently when it is framed as an assistant or a competitor beforehand
Summary
Social robots are rapidly evolving and with the advancements of this technology, they are increasingly taking over tasks for which interacting with humans is an essential necessity. With this scenario in mind, people rather prefer robots to be as controllable as possible and not to act autonomously In contrast to this negative view, social robots are portrayed and expected to make people’s lives easier by functioning as helpful assistants in domestic, public, or work environments [11, 13, 14]. Focusing on this prospect, people rather prefer autonomous robots to reduce the workload and enhance comfort and convenience. Since previous research showed that a social robot is evaluated differently depending on whether it is framed before as a threatening competitor or a helpful assistant [15], we aim to examine whether the feedback-giving social robot is perceived differently when it is framed as an assistant or a competitor beforehand
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