Social influence under uncertainty in interaction with peers, robots and computers

TL;DR

This study investigates how prior beliefs influence social influence in uncertain environments across interactions with humans, robots, and computers, revealing that social robots exert more influence initially, with differences diminishing over time.

Contribution

It demonstrates the role of prior beliefs in modulating social influence and highlights differences between human-human and human-robot interactions in the absence of social cues.

Findings

Participants were more influenced by social robots than humans or computers.

Initial influence by robots decreased with repeated feedback.

Human-human interaction was modulated by social norms, unlike robot interaction.

Abstract

Taking advice from others requires confidence in their competence. This is important for interaction with peers, but also for collaboration with social robots and artificial agents. Nonetheless, we do not always have access to information about others' competence or performance. In these uncertain environments, do our prior beliefs about the nature and the competence of our interacting partners modulate our willingness to rely on their judgments? In a joint perceptual decision making task, participants made perceptual judgments and observed the simulated estimates of either a human participant, a social humanoid robot or a computer. Then they could modify their estimates based on this feedback. Results show participants' belief about the nature of their partner biased their compliance with its judgments: participants were more influenced by the social robot than human and computer partners. This difference emerged strongly at the very beginning of the task and decreased with repeated exposure to empirical feedback on the partner's responses, disclosing the role of prior beliefs in social influence under uncertainty. Furthermore, the results of our functional task suggest an important difference between human-human and human-robot interaction in the absence of overt socially relevant signal from the partner: the former is modulated by social normative mechanisms, whereas the latter is guided by purely informational mechanisms linked to the perceived competence of the partner.