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Designing ethical social robots - A longitudinal field study with older adults

van Maris, Anouk; Zook, Nancy; Caleb-Solly, Praminda; Studley, Matthew; Winfield, Alan; Dogramadzi, Sanja

Authors

Nancy Zook Nancy.Zook@uwe.ac.uk
Associate Professor in Psychology

Praminda Caleb-Solly



Abstract

Emotional deception and emotional attachment are regarded as ethical concerns in human robot interaction. Considering these concerns is essential, particularly as little is known about longitudinal effects of interactions with social robots. We ran a longitudinal user study with older adults in two retirement villages, where people interacted with a robot in a didactic setting for eight sessions over a period of four weeks. The robot would show either non-emotive or emotive behavior during these interactions in order to investigate emotional deception. Questionnaires were given to investigate participants’ acceptance of the robot, perception of the social interactions with the robot and attachment to the robot. Results show that the robot’s behavior did not seem to influence participants’ acceptance of the robot, perception of the interaction or attachment to the robot. Time did not appear to influence participants’ level of attachment to the robot, which ranged from low to medium. The perceived ease of using the robot significantly increased over time. These findings indicate that a robot showing emotions (and perhaps resulting in users being deceived) in a didactic setting may not by default negatively influence participants’ acceptance and perception of the robot, and that older adults may not become distressed if the robot would break or be taken away from them, as attachment to the robot in this didactic setting was not high. However, more research is required as there may be other factors influencing these ethical concerns, and support through other measurements than questionnaires are required to be able to draw conclusions regarding these concerns.

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jan 6, 2020
Online Publication Date Jan 24, 2020
Publication Date Jan 24, 2020
Deposit Date Jan 22, 2020
Publicly Available Date Jan 30, 2020
Journal Frontiers in Robotics and AI
Electronic ISSN 2296-9144
Publisher Frontiers Media
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 7
Issue 1
DOI https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2020.00001
Keywords social robots, older adults, longitudinal study, ethics, deception, attachment
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/5202937

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Designing Ethical Social Robots—A Longitudinal Field Study With Older Adults (852 Kb)
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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2020 van Maris, Zook, Caleb-Solly, Studley,Winfield and Dogramadzi.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted
academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.





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