Author Interviews, Psychological Science, Technology / 07.08.2017
People Prefer Their Robots To Be Less Than Perfect
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Mag. Nicole Mirnig
Research Fellow
Center for Human-Computer Interaction
University of Salzburg
Salzburg, Austria
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: From our previous research on social robots, we know that humans show observable reactions when a robot makes an error. These findings result from a video analysis we performed over a large data corpus from different human-robot interaction studies. With the study at hand, we wanted to replicate this effect in the lab in order to explore into more detail how humans react and what they think about a robot that makes a mistake.
Our main findings made us quite excited. First of all, we could show that humans respond to faulty robot behavior with social signals. Second, we found that the error-prone robot was perceived as significantly more likeable than the flawless robot.
One possible explanation for this finding would be the following. Research has shown that people form their opinions and expectations about robots to a substantial proportion on what they learn from the media. Those media entail movies in which robots are often portrayed as perfectly functioning entities (good or evil). Upon interacting with a social robot themselves, people adjust their opinions and expectations based on their interaction experience. We assume that interacting with a robot that makes mistakes, makes us feel closer and less inferior to technology.
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