The effect of a robotic agent on dishonest behavior

Abstract

Future human-robot interactions will have to consider different human traits. One human feature that may be affected by the presence of virtual agents or robots is human honesty. Will people try to take advantage in the presence of a robot/virtual agent? Some previous studies have shown that the physical presence of a robot can decrease cheating in humans. In this paper, we investigated if merely a simple video of a robot looking at the user was enough to affect human's cheating behavior. Further, we also investigated if the Honesty-Humility personality trait predicted cheating. We conducted a study with 160 participants that were randomly allocated to one of two conditions: (1) performing the task with a video of a robot looking at them, or (2) doing the task alone. Results showed that being alone or with a video of a robot produced equal levels of cheating and the Honesty-Humility dimension predicted cheating, particularly the fairness sub-domain was responsible for predicting cheating behavior. This study has implications for future scenarios where dishonesty might be tempting, and physical presence of an observer might not be possible. CCS CONCEPTS • Applied computing → Psychology; • Computer systems organization → Robotics; • Human-centered computing → User studies.

“No Chit Chat!” A Warning From a Physical Versus Virtual Robot Invigilator: Which Matters Most?

“…In particular, the role of an invigilator for social robots is under study. A few studies have explored the role of the invigilator in the context of the impact of a robot's presence on people's honesty with regard to cheating (Hoffman et al, 2015;Petisca et al, 2020).…”

“…A few studies have explored the impact of a robot on academic dishonesty displayed by adults, where the robot had the role of an invigilator (Hoffman et al, 2015;Petisca et al, 2020;Ahmad et al, 2021). Another study focused on young children and compared the presence of a robot and a human as an invigilator (Mubin et al, 2020).…”

If you Cheat, I Cheat: Cheating on a Collaborative Task with a Social Robot

“…Relatedly, Petisca et al investigate whether or not people are more likely to cheat at a game while in the presence of a robot. They find that the presence of the robot does not inhibit cheating, and find that, in fact, the person cheats at the same rate as if they were alone [10], [11]. Both of these works considered cheating scenarios in which the robot was merely an observer and did not take part in the task.…”

The personality of a robot. An adaptation of the HEXACO – 60 as a tool for HRI

“…In this context, several questionnaires have been developed to assess the perception of social robots and their personality [12,13,14], but, to the best of our knowledge, no study has employed measures commonly used for assessing human personality to evaluate robot personality. To this end, we developed an observer-report version of Ashton and Lee's HEXACO-60 [15], which has already been used in HRI to measure personality traits about humans in interaction with robots [16,17,18,19], but never as a tool to assess the perceived personality traits of a humanoid robot. The HEXACO model of personality is a dimensional taxonomy of human personality based on findings from a series of lexical studies [20,21,22] that proposes an organization of individual differences in personality characteristics in terms of six broad trait domains: Extraversion (i.e., tendency to feel positively about oneself, to feel confident and comfortable in social situations, to experience high levels of arousal and energy), Agreeableness (i.e., tendency to forgive the wrongs suffered, to be lenient in judging others, to be open to compromise and cooperation), Conscientiousness (i.e., tendency to be organized, disciplined, accurate, and reliable in performing tasks), Emotionality (i.e., tendency to experience negative affects such as anxiety, worry, fear, and stress), Openness to Experience (i.e., tendency to appreciate beauty, art, and unusual ideas and people, and to be curious about various domains of knowledge), and Honesty-Humility (i.e., tendency to avoid manipulation and deception for personal gain and to feel little interest for wealth, luxuries, and social status).…”