Embodied social agents are programmed to display human‐like social behaviour to increase intuitiveness of interacting with these agents. It is yet unclear what the differences in peoples' responses are to different types of agents' social behaviours. One example is touch. Despite robots' physical embodiment and increasing autonomy, the effect of communicative touch has been a mostly overlooked aspect of human‐robot interaction. This video‐based, 2 × 2 between‐subject survey experiment (N = 119) found that the combination of touch and proactivity influenced whether people saw the robot as machine‐like and dependable. Furthermore, participants' attitude toward robots in general was found to influence perceived closeness between a human and a robot. Results show that communicative touch could be considered a more appropriate behaviour for proactive agents rather than reactive agents. Also, people that are generally more positive towards robots find robots that interact by touch less machine‐like. These effects illustrate that careful consideration is necessary when incorporating social behaviours in agents' physical interaction design. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Despite robots' embodiment, the effect of physical contact or touch and its interaction with robots' autonomous behaviour has been a mostly overlooked aspect of human-robot interaction. This video-based, 2x2 between-subject survey experiment (N=119) found that touch and proactiveness interacted in their effects on perceived machine-likeness and dependability. Attitude towards robots in general also interacted with the effects of touch. Results show the value of further exploring the combination of physical aspects of human-robot interaction and proactiveness.