The experience of humans' and robots' mutual (im)politeness in enacted service scenarios: An empirical study

TL;DR

This empirical study investigates how human treatment influences perceptions of robot politeness and fairness in service interactions, revealing that impolite robot behavior is viewed more justifiably when humans are also impolite.

Contribution

It provides new insights into reciprocity in human-robot social interactions, highlighting the impact of human behavior on perceptions of robot politeness.

Findings

Impolite robot behavior is perceived negatively.

Perceptions of robot behavior are more justifiable if humans are also impolite.

Reciprocity influences social perception of robots.

Abstract

The paper reports an empirical study of the effect of human treatment of a robot on the social perception of the robot's behavior. The study employed an enacted interaction between an anthropomorphic "waiter" robot and two customers. The robot and one of the customers (acted out by a researcher) were following four different interaction scripts, representing all combinations of mutual politeness and impoliteness of the robot and the customer. The participants (N=24, within-subject design) were assigned the role of an "included observer", that is, a fellow customer who was present in the situation without being actively involved in the interactions. The participants assessed how they experienced the interaction scenarios by providing Likert scale scores and free-text responses. The results indicate that while impolite robots' behavior was generally assessed negatively, it was commonly perceived as more justifiable and fairer if the robot was treated impolitely by the human. Politeness reciprocity expectations in the context of the social perception of robots are discussed.