Here Comes the Bad News: Doctor Robot Taking Over

Abstract

To test in how far the Media Equation and Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) validly explain user responses to social robots, we manipulated how a bad health message was framed and the language that was used. In the wake of Experiment 2 of Burgers et al. (Patient Educ Couns 89(2):267-273, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2012.08.008), a human versus robot doctor delivered health messages framed positively or negatively, using affirmations or negations. In using frequentist (robots are different from humans) and Bayesian (robots are the same) analyses, we found that participants liked the robot doctor and the robot's message better than the human's. The robot also compelled more compliance to the medical treatment. For the level of expected quality of life, the human and robot doctor tied. The robot was not seen as affectively distant but rather involving, ethical, skilled, and people wanted to consult her again. Note that doctor robot was not a seriously looking physician but a little girl with the voice of a young woman. We conclude that both Media Equation and CASA need to be altered when it comes to robot communication. We argue that if certain negative qualities are filtered out (e.g., strong emotion expression), credibility will increase, which lowers affective distance to the messenger. Robots sometimes outperform humans on emotional tasks, which may relieve physicians from a most demanding duty of disclosing unfavorable information to a patient.

Robotic Versus Human Coaches for Active Aging: An Automated Social Presence Perspective

“…The first group of studies relies on online surveys that present participants with written [75] or video recorded [39] scenarios, followed by a set of questions designed to evaluate their perceptions of human versus robotic actors. The foci of the studies varies, from moral dilemmas to the communication ability of the human or robot agent.…”

“…For example, one online study [75] reports that participants assign higher moral obligations to human than robotic actors, such that they believe it is morally wrong for a hypothetical human actor to choose to act and save four, while sacrificing one, coal miner, but they expect the robot to make this choice when faced with the same moral dilemma. Another study [39] compares human and robotic doctors' ability to inform patients about their health conditions, following a standardized script. Participants evaluate the robot better at communicating bad news, though these researchers predict that human social presence might invert the results in a real-life scenario.…”

“…Although the design of these experiments allow for replication and comparability between humans and robots, they have limited external validity, because they refer to specific, artificial scenarios, and participants have no contact with actors or no immersion in the scenario. Such a limitation is especially important in critical scenarios [39], such as when participants do not experience a real health diagnosis.…”

“…First, in particular, they reveal that people evaluate humans and robots differently, even if the robot is perceived to be intelligent [75]. Second, lab experiments allow for more control over the stimuli, but they might not be valid in real-life scenarios [39]. Third, some elements of these methodologies are standard and necessary for interaction studies, to increase their internal validity.…”

Assessing the effect of persuasive robots interactive social cues on users’ psychological reactance, liking, trusting beliefs and compliance

“…In the not too distant future, one could anticipate that humans will share tasks, interact and collaborate with robots. This will be so for diverse areas such as manufacturing to assist humans in production lines [1] or in education where robots will take more social roles such as that of teachers [2], or even in hospitals where we could soon get used to meet a robot waiting for us to welcome, examine, diagnose, treat, and prescribe medicine for us, instead of human health workers [3]. Crucially, in many of these roles, robots will need to be able to persuade humans.…”