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ABSTRACT
The conformity effect is a critical social phenomenon through which one individual or a particular group influences the thoughts, feelings, or behaviors of another person or group. We focused on two essential factors that influence the power of the conformity effect: the number of people and gender. In this paper, we investigated whether conformity effects have changed due to the number of robots and the gender of the participants. We experimentally compared conformity effects by considering these two factors while participants answered questions after listening to incorrect answers from two, four, or six robots. The experimental results showed that the conformity ratio with the six robots is significantly larger than the two/four robots, and the conformity effect for female participants is stronger than male participants, similar to human-human conformity effects.
GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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Masahiro Shiomi
Masahiro Shiomi received M. Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in engineering from Osaka University in 2004 and 2007. During that same time, he was an intern researcher at the Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories (IRC). He is currently a group leader in the Agent Interaction Design department at IRC and at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR). His research interests include human-robot interaction, social touch, robotics for childcare, networked robots, and field trials.
Norihiro Hagita
Norihiro Hagita received B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Keio University, Japan in 1976, 1978, and 1986. From 1978 to 2001, he was with the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT). He joined the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) in 2001 and in 2002 established the ATR Media Information Science Laboratories and the ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories. His current research interests include communication robots, networked robot systems, interaction media, and pattern recognition. He is a fellow of the Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication Engineers, Japan as well as a member of the Robotics Society of Japan, the Information Processing Society of Japan, and The Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence. He is also a co-chair for the IEEE Technical Committee on Networked Robots.