Great Expectations? Relation of Previous Experiences With Social Robots in Real Life or in the Media and Expectancies Based on Qualitative and Quantitative Assessment

Abstract

Social robots, which mostly look and behave like humans, are often perceived as somehow alive and treated similar to humans, despite the fact that they are non-living electronic devices. Based on considerations of the uncertainty reduction theory, the question arises what expectancies regarding social robots people have and what sources they use to achieve these expectancies. To receive an in-depth understanding of people’s expectancies regarding social robots and particularly how these expectancies are influenced by people’s experiences with real robots but also with fictional robots from media, thirteen semi-structured interviews and a quantitative online study ( n = 433) were conducted. Results indicate that people’s experiences with robots in the media lead to high expectations regarding the skills of robots, which in turn increase people’s general expectancies regarding social robots being part of the society as well as their personal lives. Furthermore, knowledge of negatively perceived fictional robots increases negative expectancies of robots becoming a threat to humans, while technical affinity reduces general robot anxiety.

Don’t overthink: fast decision making combined with behavior variability perceived as more human-like

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More Than You Expect: Priors Influence on the Adoption of Intentional Stance Toward Humanoid Robots

“…Although, we are far from achieving all what the media promises, such exposure to technology has created in the future users high expectations regarding what are the robots capable of. Researchers have focused on developing tools that measure general preferences and expectations toward robots and assessed how those might have an impact on actual human robot interaction as presented by [19]. People would prefer robots that look like machines, with human-like speech and that are predictable, smart but controllable, and polite (for review see [20,21]).…”

Building a Stronger CASA: Extending the Computers Are Social Actors Paradigm

“…From its earliest iterations, Nass and colleagues argued that some individual differences could be important when testing CASA, including demographics (e.g., level of education) and knowledge of technology (Nass & Steuer, 1993). Related findings suggest that CASA effects are moderated by factors such as previous computer experience (Johnson & Gardner, 2007) and that a person's expectations of media agents (e.g., social robots) vary based on their experience (Horstmann & Krämer, 2019). Experience is relevant to CASA's assumption of mindlessness given that experience might determine whether a mindless or mindful response is triggered when encountering a media agent.…”