Talking Like One of Us: Effects of Using Regional Language in a Humanoid Social Robot

TL;DR

This study examines how using regional language (Low German) versus standard language (High German) by a humanoid robot affects human perceptions of warmth, competence, and discomfort during social interactions.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on the impact of regional language use in social robots on human social perceptions and acceptance.

Findings

Higher perceived warmth with Low German robot speech

No significant difference in perceived competence

Participants' cultural familiarity influenced perceptions

Abstract

Social robots are becoming more and more perceptible in public service settings. For engaging people in a natural environment a smooth social interaction as well as acceptance by the users are important issues for future successful Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). The type of verbal communication has a special significance here. In this paper we investigate the effects of spoken language varieties of a non-standard/regional language compared to standard language. More precisely we compare a human dialog with a humanoid social robot Pepper where the robot on the one hand is answering in High German and on the other hand in Low German, a regional language that is understood and partly still spoken in the northern parts of Germany. The content of what the robot says remains the same in both variants. We are interested in the effects that these two different ways of robot talk have on human interlocutors who are more or less familiar with Low German in terms of perceived warmth, competence and possible discomfort in conversation against a background of cultural identity. To measure these factors we use the Robotic Social Attributes Scale (RoSAS) on 17 participants with an age ranging from 19 to 61. Our results show that significantly higher warmth is perceived in the Low German version of the conversation.