Would you like to play with me?: how robots' group membership and task features influence human-robot interaction

  • Authors:

  • Markus Häring;Dieta Kuchenbrandt;Elisabeth André

  • Affiliations:

  • Augsburg University, Augsburg, Germany;Center of Excellence in Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC), Bielefeld, Germany;Augsburg University, Augsburg, Germany

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2014 ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction
  • Year:
  • 2014

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Abstract

In the present experiment, we investigated how robots' social category membership and characteristics of an HRI task affect humans' evaluative and behavioral reactions toward robots. Participants (N = 38) played a card game together with two robots, one belonging to participants' social in-group and the other one being a social out-group member. Furthermore, participants were either asked to cooperate with the in- and to compete with the out-group robot (congruent condition), or they were asked to cooperate with the out-group robot while competing with the in-group robot (incongruent condition). The results largely support our hypotheses: Participants showed more positive evaluative reactions toward the in-group (vs. the out-group) robot and they anthropomorphized it more strongly, independent of the congruency or incongruence of the HRI. Moreover, if required, participants cooperated with both the in- and the out-group robot, whereas their cooperativeness was more pronounced toward the in-group robot. Finally, participants indicated more difficulties with the HRI in the incongruent vs. the congruent condition. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.