It’s Not My Fault, But I’m to Blame: The Effect of a Home Robot’s Attribution and Approach Movement on Trust and Emotion of Users

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of attribution and approach movement of the social robot when the user wrongly perceives an error as the robot’s responsibility. The robot’s responsibility attribution and approach movement strategies for the error recovery were examined in a situation where the robot was functioning normally, but the user misunderstood it as robot’s fault. In the experiment participants were exposed to four different verbal and movement interaction scenarios with a social robot and then responded to a survey concerning emotions and trust. Results showed that people no longer trusted the robot that approached while attributing the responsibility to the user. The implication of this study is that a powerful self-serving bias is aroused when a robot attributes the responsibility to the user, and thus, it negatively impacts user experiences even if the event took place due to the user’s misunderstanding. This study suggests empirical guidance for designing a social robot’s attribution strategies and movement interactions.

Keywords:

• Service robot
• human-robot interaction
• trust
• error recovery
• attribution
• proxemics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data and availability statement

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13DBsuSQueAvEb2SZ3SjKUo81KQ2eHU5d/view?usp=share_link

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gyounghwa Na

Gyounghwa Na is currently a UX designer at Samsung Electronics. She received her master’s degree in information systems from Yonsei University. She is interested in the field of Human-Robot Interaction, and user experience based on visual elements.

Junho Choi

Junho Choi received his Ph.D. in communication from SUNY-Buffalo and now a professor of Graduate School of Information, Yonsei University. His research interests include Human-Computer Interaction, mobile user experience design, mobility, and network analysis.

Hyunmin Kang

Hyunmin Kang is a research scientist at the Stanford Center at the Incheon Global Campus. He is interested in the field of AI-human interaction based on human factors and cognitive engineering, and has been studying how smart technologies affect human life and society.