Investing in commitment: Persistence in a joint action is enhanced by the perception of a partner’s effort

Abstract

Can the perception that one's partner is investing effort generate a sense of commitment to a joint action? To test this, we developed a 2-player version of the classic snake game which became increasingly boring over the course of each round. This enabled us to operationalize commitment in terms of how long participants persisted before pressing a 'finish' button to conclude each round. Our results from three experiments reveal that participants persisted longer when they perceived what they believed to be cues of their partner's effortful contribution (Experiment 1). Crucially, this effect was not observed when they knew their partner to be an algorithm (Experiment 2), nor when it was their own effort that had been invested (Experiment 3). These results support the hypothesis that the perception of a partner's effort elicits a sense of commitment, leading to increased persistence in the face of a temptation to disengage.

Measuring engagement elicited by eye contact in Human-Robot Interaction

“…As stated in [1, p.1]: "Engagement is a category of user experience characterized by attributes of challenge, positive affect, endurability, aesthetic and sensory appeal, attention, feedback, variety/novelty, interactivity, and perceived user control". Studies that have examined the aspect of engagement in HRI used both explicit [e.g., [2][3][4][5] and implicit measures [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Explicit measures and questionnaireswhile providing valuable hints regarding the phenomenon of interest, suffer from several limitations.…”

Individual perception dynamics in drunk games

“…In pairwise coordination games it has also been shown that repeated coordination tasks can elicit a sense of commitment in agents, reminiscent of an evolving individual state. Because of such commitment, agents change their perception of the game over time and end up cooperating more than expected, even through fluctuations of interest and trust [55].…”

The perception of a robot partner’s effort elicits a sense of commitment to human-robot interaction

“…In support of this hypothesis, Michael, Sebanz & Knoblich (2016) reported evidence that a high degree of spatiotemporal coordination within joint action may function as such a cue, leading agents to remain engaged in the joint action for a longer time and making them Sense of Commitment in HRI 6 more likely to persist until the goal is achieved, while Chennells et al (under review) demonstrated that repeatedly coordinating with the same partner in a decision-making context is sufficient to elicit a sense of commitment, leading agents to resist tempting alternatives and thereby sustaining cooperation through fluctuations in individuals' interests. In a similar vein, Székely & Michael (2018) probed the hypothesis that one's perception of a partner's investment of effort in a joint action may provide such a cue --i.e. if one perceives one's partner to be investing a high degree of effort, or to have invested a high degree of effort, this may lead one to feel committed to making one's contribution to the joint action.…”

“…In the present study, we adapted Székely & Michael (2018)'s paradigm to the context of human-robot interaction in order to investigate whether participants' persistence would be similarly reinforced by the perception of cues that a humanoid robot partner was making an effortful contribution (Michael & Salice, 2017). In particular, we chose to focus on the perception of cognitive effort rather than physical effort (as in Székely & Michael, 2018), since we surmised that many people's a priori conception of robots may lead them to be disinclined to perceive the actions of a robot as physically effortful (but see Feltz et al, 2014).…”

“…The paradigm implements a two-player version of the classic 'snake game', in which the participant controls the left-right axis while their partner controls the up-down axis. In our study, as in Székely & Michael (2018), participants were in fact paired with a virtual partner (i.e. an algorithm controls the up-down axis), but were led to believe that their partner was the Sense of Commitment in HRI 7 iCub, a humanoid robot.…”