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Purpose of the Review The purpose of this review is to give an overview of the societal and ethical issues in human-robot interaction, (HRI), mainly focusing on the literature of the last five years. Recent Findings Both general ethical challenges associated with robot deployment and those specific to human-robot interaction are addressed and complemented by discussions of ethics within HRI research, ethics related behavior towards robots, as well as ethics and robot rights. Moreover, we discuss ethical challenges in sensitive contexts such as medicine, rehabilitation, and care. We conclude our review by providing an overview of the key ethics frameworks and guidelines to inspire researchers, developers, and stakeholders alike. Summary This review offers a timely overview of the state-of-the art societal and ethical issues that arise from the ever more steady integration of robots into human society. We exemplify the key issues and debates in the field by mainly covering the literature of the past five years.

One contribution of 17 to a theme issue 'From social brains to social robots: applying neurocognitive insights to human -robot interaction'.Imagined contact (IC), that is, mentally simulating an interaction with an outgroup member, reduces negative attitudes towards outgroup members, increases contact intentions, and reduces intergroup anxiety in humanhuman intergroup context. Our experiment tested the effectiveness of IC with a robot to improve human-robot interaction (HRI). Social psychological literature suggested that IC provides a behavioural script for an interaction. Hence, an imagined scenario similar to a real contact scenario should be more effective in eliciting the aforementioned positive effects. We therefore examined the effect of similarity between IC with a robot and the following actual HRI on interaction perception, and behaviours towards the robot. High similarity was expected to lead to a more positive perception of HRI and more positive interaction behaviour towards the robot (e.g. more social behaviour). Results showed that perceived HRI quality was evaluated more positively and participants displayed more social behaviour towards the robot when the imagined task resembled the HRI that followed, compared to when it did not resemble the subsequent HRI. When controlling for covariates, the effects on number of social behaviours and perceived interaction quality remained significant, however, there was no effect on the total amount of time spent producing social behaviours.This article is part of the theme issue 'From social brains to social robots: applying neurocognitive insights to human -robot interaction'.