If it Looks like a Human and Speaks like a Human ... Dialogue and cooperation in human-robot interactions

TL;DR

This study investigates how human-robot communication influences cooperation in strategic interactions, revealing that verbal reactions increase cooperation regardless of partner type, with implications for human-robot interaction design.

Contribution

It provides new empirical evidence on the impact of verbal communication in strategic settings involving humans and robots, highlighting its role in promoting cooperation.

Findings

Subjects cooperate more with human partners.

Verbal reactions increase cooperation regardless of partner type.

Results are robust across various controls and biases.

Abstract

The paper presents the results of a behavioral experiment conducted between February 2020 and March 2021 at Universit\`a Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan Campus in which students were matched to either a human or a humanoid robotic partner to play an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. The results of a Logit estimation procedure show that subjects are more likely to cooperate with human rather robotic partners; that are more likely to cooperate after receiving a dialogic verbal reaction following the realization of a sub-obtimal social outcome; that the effect of the verbal reaction is independent on the nature of the partner. Our findings provide new evidence on the effect of verbal communication in strategic frameworks. Results are robust to the exclusion of students of Economics related subjects, to the inclusion of a set of psychological and behavioral controls, to the way subjects perceive robots' behavior and to potential gender biases in human-human interactions.