Human reactions to good and bad robots

Abstract

There has been little previous research assessing people’s emotions and cognitions in response to different types of robot behaviour. This study investigated how people think and feel during interactions with robots who behave either well or poorly. 45 participants interacted with a B21r robot in a basic task to lead the robot along a marked path. Each participant was randomly assigned to either the robot following well or the robot following poorly. The most frequently reported emotions were frustration, fear, and happiness, and people commonly reported thoughts about the robot and also about themselves in the interaction. People reported more positive emotions in response to the good robot. Independently of group assignment, positive emotions during the task were associated with more positive evaluations of the robot and negative emotions were associated with more negative evaluations. These results suggest that robot designers should seek to maximize people’s positive emotions and minimize negative emotions to maximise the quality of human-robot interactions. Results also suggest that recognising emotions may be difficult for robots, and direct questioning may be an easier strategy.