A Systematic Review of Attitudes, Anxiety, Acceptance, and Trust Towards Social Robots

Abstract

As social robots become more common, there is a need to understand how people perceive and interact with such technology. This systematic review seeks to estimate people's attitudes toward, trust in, anxiety associated with, and acceptance of social robots; as well as factors that are associated with these beliefs. Ninety-seven studies were identified with a combined sample of over 13,000 participants and a standardized score was computed for each in order to represent the valence (positive, negative, or neutral) and magnitude (on a scale from 1 to − 1) of people's beliefs about robots. Potential moderating factors such as the robots' domain of application and design, the type of exposure to the robot, and the characteristics of potential users were also investigated. The findings suggest that people generally have positive attitudes towards social robots and are willing to interact with them. This finding may challenge some of the existing doubt surrounding the adoption of robotics in social domains of application but more research is needed to fully understand the factors that influence attitudes. Keywords Attitudes toward technology • Social robots • Systematic review • Human-robot interaction Stanislava Naneva and Marina Sarda Gou have contributed equally to this work.

What Makes a Robot Social? A Review of Social Robots from Science Fiction to a Home or Hospital Near You

“…[61]), acceptance (e.g. [57,62]), and disclosure (e.g. [42,[63][64][65][66][67]) with social robots are being studied.…”

Are friends electric? The benefits and risks of human-robot relationships

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“…The magnitude of benefit experienced from social robot therapeutic interventions, which integrate one or more of these dimensions, depends, in part, on attitudes and beliefs toward robots. Factors such as trust and acceptance, in combination with variables such as age, gender, culture, and prior robot exposure, are important influences in the adoption and sustained use of robot technology ( Wortham and Theodorou, 2017 ; Langer et al., 2019 ; Naneva et al., 2020 ).…”

Robots as Mirrors of the Human Mind

“…However, as our knowledge about the workings of the observed system becomes available, we might switch from the more accessible anthropomorphic reasoning, with which we have the most experience, to the alternative way of explaining other entities or agents (Epley et al, 2007). For the purposes of future research, the determinants of inclusion of robots into the humanlike category of intentional agents still remain to be answered; there is also evidence that humans might have negative attitudes or anxiety toward robots (for a detailed meta-analysis of the literature on positive and negative attitudes toward robots, see Naneva et al, 2020). In this context, it seems plausible that people might treat robots as out-group members, given that some of the items on the most commonly used questionnaire developed to measure negative attitudes (Nomura et al, 2006) address in-group/out-group membership (e.g., “I surmise that something negative for humans happen when robots become more similar to humans” and “I feel anxiety if robots really have their own emotions”).…”