From Childhood To Adulthood: The Effects Of Human-Robot Interactions On Attitudes Toward Robots And Other Outgroups

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b3422566

Growing number of research studies focus on relationship maintenance bThis thesis investigated whether and how brief positive contact with a social robot affects children’s perceptions of robots and of other uncontacted outgroups. Past research demonstrates developmental changes in how individuals perceive robots. Nevertheless, limited studies have compared different age groups regarding their attitudes toward robots or how their attitudes can be improved. Therefore, two experimental studies were conducted to understand and improve children’s attitudes toward robots and other outgroups in early childhood (Study 1; N = 68; age = 4-6 years; Mage = 5.48, SD = 0.74; 32 females), and middle childhood (Study 2; N = 49; age = 8-12 years; Mage = 10.20, SD = 1.07; 28 females). In both studies, children were assigned to either the interaction or the no-interaction condition. Children in both conditions were assessed for the attitudes and emotions they felt toward social robots (intergroup attitude scale and emotion toward outgroup scale, respectively), and the amount of resources they would provide to social robots and other outgroups (resource allocation task). Prior to the administration of these measures, children in the interaction condition participated in a fast friendship procedure in which they engaged in reciprocal self-disclosure with a social robot. In addition to Studies 1 and 2, the current study used existing data from a study with adult participants (Bagci et al., 2023) to compare the impact of robot interaction on attitudes toward robots across three age groups (early childhood vs. middle childhood vs. adulthood). In Study 1: Early Childhood, results demonstrated that young children showed improved attitudes toward social robots, worsened attitudes toward their ingroup, and decreased resource allocations to other outgroups (e.g., people with disabilities). In Study 2: Middle Childhood, older children showed improved attitudes and emotions, as well as increased resource allocation toward social robots, while the resource allocations did not change for other outgroups. Lastly, the comparison of three studies demonstrated that a brief positive interaction with a robot improved attitudes toward social robots across all age groups. These results indicate that a positive interaction based on self-disclosure leads to improved attitudes towards social robots across development. In children, however, the attitude improvement may extend only to other robots and not to other uncontacted outgroups. This study is the first to experimentally investigate the developmental changes in attitudes toward robots after an interaction with a robot. The findings also provide novel practical insights by showing that integrating intergroup relations into child-robot interaction can effectively improve child-robot relations.