Department of Information Engineering and Center E. Piaggio, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
Department of Economics, Royal Holloway University of London, London, UK.
Sci Rep. 2021 May 6;11(1):9687. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-88622-9.
Understanding human trust in machine partners has become imperative due to the widespread use of intelligent machines in a variety of applications and contexts. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether human-beings trust a social robot-i.e. a human-like robot that embodies emotional states, empathy, and non-verbal communication-differently than other types of agents. To do so, we adapt the well-known economic trust-game proposed by Charness and Dufwenberg (2006) to assess whether receiving a promise from a robot increases human-trust in it. We find that receiving a promise from the robot increases the trust of the human in it, but only for individuals who perceive the robot very similar to a human-being. Importantly, we observe a similar pattern in choices when we replace the humanoid counterpart with a real human but not when it is replaced by a computer-box. Additionally, we investigate participants' psychophysiological reaction in terms of cardiovascular and electrodermal activity. Our results highlight an increased psychophysiological arousal when the game is played with the social robot compared to the computer-box. Taken all together, these results strongly support the development of technologies enhancing the humanity of robots.
由于智能机器在各种应用和场景中的广泛使用，理解人类对机器伙伴的信任变得至关重要。本文旨在研究人类是否会以不同于其他类型代理的方式信任社交机器人——即具有情感状态、同理心和非言语交流的类人机器人。为此，我们改编了 Charness 和 Dufwenberg（2006）提出的著名经济信任游戏，以评估从机器人那里收到承诺是否会增加人类对其的信任。我们发现，收到机器人的承诺会增加人类对其的信任，但前提是个人将机器人感知得非常像人类。重要的是，当我们用人代替类人机器人时，我们会观察到类似的选择模式，但当用计算机箱代替时则不会。此外，我们还研究了参与者在心血管和皮肤电活动方面的心理生理反应。我们的研究结果表明，与计算机箱相比，当与人形机器人玩游戏时，参与者的心理生理唤醒会增加。综上所述，这些结果强烈支持开发增强机器人人性化的技术。
