ABSTRACT
Social robots are beginning to leave factories and labs and enter consumer markets. As social robots are becoming more and more prevalent, it is imperative for us to understand what factors will impact people’s perceptions and evaluations of social robots. In this study, we replicate classic audit studies on biased social decision-making and conduct an experiment to investigate the effects of social robot characteristics (warm vs. competent) and design features (physical appearance, narratives describing these characteristics and combinations of appearance and characteristic narratives) on people’s perceptions of warmth, competence, job suitability and overall first-impression evaluations of social robots. The data indicate that, in general, competent robots are preferred over warm robots and appearance is the most effective method of conveying product information. The findings contribute to our understanding of human-robot interactions, social robot design, human psychology and social behavior.
