The Influence of Robot Number on Robot Group Perception—A Call for Action

Abstract

Research on robot groups has often applied psychological principles underlying group processes between humans to interactions with and between robots. However, such research has failed to test empirically whether these principles indeed apply to the robot context. For instance, the notion of a social group may be interpreted differently when facing human versus robot groups. Basic research on this issue is missing. Therefore, the present experiment aimed at integrating social psychological theorizing and research on robot groups by utilizing the principles of group entitativity. We examined the effect of robot number and similarity on the perception of these robots as a (social) group. To do so, participants saw pictures of one to ten robots, appearing low or high in similarity. Results showed that the aspects eliciting the perception of a social "group" in humans seem to differ from the factors evoking robot group perception. According to our findings, at least three robots seem necessary for the perception of a robot "group" to emerge. Social psychological research, however, has proposed that two persons suffice to elicit the notion of a human social group. Basic research is needed to substantiate assumptions drawn from social psychological theorizing before translating it into human-robot context.

The Doors of Social Robot Perception: The Influence of Implicit Self-theories

“…Indeed, social robots, owing in part to their humanlike embodiment (see Ferrari et al, 2016;Haring et al, 2018), perceived agency and experience (see Gray and Wegner, 2012), social capabilities (see Collins, 2019) and capacity for eliciting affective responses (see Damiano and Dumouchel, 2018), have been identified as a distinctly different class of product (see de Graaf et al, 2016;Severson and Carlson, 2010), and one that defies clear categorisation (see Kahn et al, 2011;Strait et al, 2019). This has lead several researchers (e.g., de Graaf et al, 2019;Damholdt et al, 2020), to argue that it is erroneous to accept, without question, that the fundamental propositions of the social sciences, will invariably apply to social robotics and HRI research (see also Wullenkord and Eyssel, 2020). In this view, preliminary evidence is required to substantiate whether implicit self-theories influence people's perceptions and responses to social robots.…”

“…Consistent with the recommendation of Wullenkord and Eyssel (2020), who argue that HRI research should consider covariate influences, measures of gender , age (Kuo et al, 2009), education (Eurobarometer, 2012), media exposure to science fiction (Sandoval et al, 2014), technology commitment (Halperin et al, 2011), and prior robot experience (Bartneck et al, 2007) were assessed. These variables have been routinely shown to impact individuals' perceptions of robots (see Schermerhorn et al, 2008;Enz et al, 2011;Bartneck et al, 2020).…”

A Minority of One against a Majority of Robots

“…We chose to have three robots in the experiment, as three robots are the minimum necessary for them to be considered a group [46]. In Asch's studies, he founds that more confederates present increased conformity, but few differences were found when the group was larger than three confederates [2].…”

Better than Us: The Role of Implicit Self-Theories in Determining Perceived Threat Responses in HRI

“…Future studies might also include a human control condition comparable to the robot condition in terms of general knowledge and perceived intelligence (e.g., a professional quizzer). Another limitation, although not within the scope of our hypotheses, might be that we did not assess wellknown covariate influences that may interact or confound the interpretation of data [e.g., 3,103,109]. It is important for future studies to examine covariate influences to better understand the significance of our findings.…”