We are all Individuals: The Role of Robot Personality and Human Traits in Trustworthy Interaction

TL;DR

This study investigates how robot personality and human traits influence trust and preference in human-robot interactions, demonstrating that robot extroversion increases trust and preferences regardless of human personality.

Contribution

It introduces a method to accurately portray robot personality using vocal and linguistic cues and examines how human traits affect trust in robot interactions.

Findings

Extrovert robots are preferred and trusted more than introvert robots.

Robot personality can be effectively conveyed through vocal and linguistic features.

Human attitudes towards robots influence trust levels in robot interactions.

Abstract

As robots take on roles in our society, it is important that their appearance, behaviour and personality are appropriate for the job they are given and are perceived favourably by the people with whom they interact. Here, we provide an extensive quantitative and qualitative study exploring robot personality but, importantly, with respect to individual human traits. Firstly, we show that we can accurately portray personality in a social robot, in terms of extroversion-introversion using vocal cues and linguistic features. Secondly, through garnering preferences and trust ratings for these different robot personalities, we establish that, for a Robo-Barista, an extrovert robot is preferred and trusted more than an introvert robot, regardless of the subject's own personality. Thirdly, we find that individual attitudes and predispositions towards robots do impact trust in the Robo-Baristas, and are therefore important considerations in addition to robot personality, roles and interaction context when designing any human-robot interaction study.