First encounter with robot Alpha: How individual differences interact with vocal and kinetic cues in users’ social responses

Abstract

The Computers are Social Actors (CASA) paradigm was proposed more than two decades ago to understand humans’ interaction with computer technologies. Today, as emerging technologies like social robots become more personal and persuasive, questions of how users respond to them socially, what individual factors leverage the relationship, and what constitutes the social influence of these technologies need to be addressed. A lab experiment was conducted to examine the interactions between individual differences and social robots’ vocal and kinetic cues. Results suggested that users developed more trust in a social robot with a human voice than with a synthetic voice. Users also developed more intimacy and interest in the social robot when it was paired with humanlike gestures. Moreover, individual differences including users’ gender, attitudes toward robots, and robot exposure affected their psychological responses. The theoretical, practical, and ethical value of the findings was further discussed in the study.

Applicant Fairness Perceptions of a Robot-Mediated Job Interview: A Video Vignette-Based Experimental Survey

“…Adding features that increase facial mimicry (e.g., smiling and blinking) and body movement (e.g., leaning forward) may lead to even more social presence, and to getting a “better feel” of the applicant. Indeed, recent research reveals that adding more humanlike kinetic cues to a social robot increases the perceived intimacy of the interaction (Xu, 2019 ). However, adding such features will entail the disadvantage of allowing certain triggers to perceptual biases, as applicants with more lively facial mimicry and body movement are typically associated with being extravert, which may lead to favorability bias and more positive assessments (Paulhus and Morgan, 1997 ; Swann and Rentfrow, 2001 ).…”

Voice in Human–Agent Interaction

“…This raises a serious question of reliability given that people will tend to answer a question even when they have no answer [94]. Others did not consider the impact of gender, e.g., References [33,74,137,190]. In such cases, design decisions maintained the status quo.…”

“…For example, a therapist agent was gendered female, because at the time of the study and in that cultural context most therapists were women [33]. Others used a male voice based on the assumption that robots are read as male [190]. Lack of awareness, lack of interest, or understandable limitations in technical, research, or budget scope may have been at play.…”

“…Human voices were rated more likeable than synthetic voices overall [50,63,130,170,182,190,191], but there was some nuance. Feelings of trust were greater for a human voice in Reference [190], and if participants were not familiar with robots, social presence and attraction rates were also higher. Eyssel et al [51] found that the effect was increased when the gender of the agent and participant matched.…”

“…Yilmazyildiz et al [193] found that matching the "size" implied by pitch and the actual size of the body mattered, such as by matching a low pitched voiced with a large body. Xu [190] found that the use of gestures increased feelings of intimacy and interest. Crowell et al [35] found that the voice having a body increased perceptions of its friendliness, while Shamekhi et al [161] found the same for social presence.…”