If They Disagree, Will You Conform? Exploring the Role of Robots' Value Awareness in a Decision-Making Task

TL;DR

This study explores how robots' awareness of human values influences human decision-making, perception, and conformity, revealing that value-aware robots can affect trust and hesitation in social interactions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that value awareness in robots impacts human perception and decision-making, highlighting both ethical risks and potential benefits in social contexts.

Findings

Participants distinguished value-aware robots from non-aware ones.

Value-aware robots increased perceived loyalty and trust.

Disagreement between robots and humans caused hesitation and conformity.

Abstract

This study investigates whether the opinions of robotic agents can influence human decision-making when robots display value awareness (i.e., the capability of understanding human preferences and prioritizing them in decision-making). We designed an experiment in which participants interacted with two Furhat robots - one programmed to be Value-Aware and the other Non-Value-Aware - during a labeling task for images representing human values. Results indicate that participants distinguished the Value-Aware robot from the Non-Value-Aware one. Although their explicit choices did not indicate a clear preference for one robot over the other, participants directed their gaze more toward the Value-Aware robot. Additionally, the Value-Aware robot was perceived as more loyal, suggesting that value awareness in a social robot may enhance its perceived commitment to the group. Finally, when both robots disagreed with the participant, conformity occurred in about one out of four trials, and participants took longer to confirm their responses, suggesting that two robots expressing dissent may introduce hesitation in decision-making. On one hand, this highlights the potential risk that robots, if misused, could manipulate users for unethical purposes. On the other hand, it reinforces the idea that social robots could encourage reflection in ambiguous situations and help users avoid scams.