I am Robot, Your Health Adviser for Older Adults: Do You Trust My Advice?

Abstract

Artificial intelligence and robotic solutions are seeing rapid development for use across multiple occupations and sectors, including health and social care. As robots grow more prominent in our work and home environments, whether people would favour them in receiving useful advice becomes a pressing question. In the context of human–robot interaction (HRI), little is known about people’s advice-taking behaviour and trust in the advice of robots. To this aim, we conducted an experimental study with older adults to measure their trust and compliance with robot-based advice in health-related situations. In our experiment, older adults were instructed by a fictional human dispenser to ask a humanoid robot for advice on certain vitamins and over-the-counter supplements supplied by the dispenser. In the first experimented condition, the robot would give only information-type advice, i.e., neutral informative advice on the supplements given by the human. In the second condition, the robot would give recommendation-type advice, i.e., advice in favour of more supplements than those suggested initially by the human. We measured the trust of the participants in the type of robot-based advice, anticipating that they would be more trusting of information-type advice. Moreover, we measured the compliance with the advice, for participants who received robot-based recommendations, and a closer proxy of the actual use of robot health advisers in home environments or facilities in the foreseeable future. Our findings indicated that older adults continued to trust the robot regardless of the type of advice received, highlighting a type of protective role of robot-based recommendations on their trust. We also found that higher trust in the robot resulted in higher compliance with its advice. The results underpinned the likeliness of older adults welcoming a robot at their homes or health facilities.

Exploring the Potential of Social Robots in Supporting Home Medication Management

“…There is limited understanding of caregivers' perspectives when it comes to developing robotic applications in the healthcare context, particularly in supporting medication adherence. It is also important that older adults and caregivers develop trust in social robots (Giorgi et al 2023;Sivaraman et al 2023;Zafrani et al 2023). Trust is traditionally defined as the belief that an agent will assist individuals in achieving their goals in uncertain and vulnerable situations (Piasek and Wieczorowska-Tobis 2018).…”

“…Previous research has highlighted potential trust barriers towards robots, which are influenced by various factors such as the robots' performance, characteristics, abilities, and attitudes (Hancock et al 2021). However, social robots can help overcome these barriers by offering acceptable recommendations for dealing with medicationrelated issues, being non-assertive and allowing humans to take the lead (Calisto et al 2023;Niemel ä et al 2021), and actively contributing to building trust (Giorgi et al 2023). In this study, our aim was to gather older adults' and caregivers' opinions, perspectives and expectations related to the use of social robots as tools to support medication management, and to identify the potential design challenges and factors that are important to consider when deploying robots in older adult's home.…”