The role of reciprocity in human-robot social influence

TL;DR

This study explores how reciprocal social influence can develop between humans and humanoid robots during joint perceptual tasks, revealing complex effects on trust and collaboration.

Contribution

It demonstrates that reciprocal influence mechanisms can emerge in human-robot interactions, influenced by the robot's susceptibility and social cues.

Findings

Participants lost confidence when robots followed their advice.

Participants concealed lack of confidence with susceptible robots.

Reciprocal influence supports human-robot collaboration.

Abstract

Humans are constantly influenced by others' behavior and opinions. Of importance, social influence among humans is shaped by reciprocity: we follow more the advice of someone who has been taking into consideration our opinions. In the current work, we investigate whether reciprocal social influence can emerge while interacting with a social humanoid robot. In a joint task, a human participant and a humanoid robot made perceptual estimates and then could overtly modify them after observing the partner's judgment. Results show that endowing the robot with the ability to express and modulate its own level of susceptibility to the human's judgments represented a double-edged sword. On the one hand, participants lost confidence in the robot's competence when the robot was following their advice; on the other hand, participants were unwilling to disclose their lack of confidence to the susceptible robot, suggesting the emergence of reciprocal mechanisms of social influence supporting human-robot collaboration.