People treat a robot like a human being when the robot speaks to them

What is it about?

The paper presents the results of an experiment conducted between 2020 and 2021 on 500 university students randomly matched with either a human or a humanoid robot partner to play an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. The results show that: (i) human subjects are more likely to cooperate with humans rather than with robots; (ii) subjects are more likely to cooperate after receiving a verbal reaction by the partner following a sub-optimal social outcome; and (iii) the effect of the verbal reaction is not dependent on the nature of the partner (I.e. subject behaves similarly with human and robotic partners who speak).

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Why is it important?

Our findings may have interesting implications in a number of cases where robots are used to interact with – especially fragile – human beings (nursing homes, care facilities, hospitals, kinder gardens, etc.) suggesting that an apologizing robot can positively influence the cooperative behavior of a human subject, should a minor contrast occur.

Perspectives