Effect of robot´s title in human-robot interaction

The collaboration between humans and intelligent agents keeps increasing as the technology advances. In this sense, each can rely on the other´s strengths to achieve the best overall performance. But as intelligent agents play an increasingly escalating role as a partner rather than mere tools, it is imperative that we understand how humans are influenced by such agents. This is so as to achieve a certain level of persuasiveness to ensure human compliance with intelligent agents in times of need, and also prevent over-reliance on such agents, which may make humans susceptible to manipulation. Reviewing the literature from human-computer interaction, persuasion, and decision-making processes, this study examined the effect of labelling source expertise (i.e., title) on the human decision-making process, when there is not an agreement between human and robot partners. Specifically, we conducted an experiment (n = 88) to investigate how perceived expertise of a robot resulted in the attractiveness, intelligence and credibility of the robot, and how these perceptions influence the level of cooperation and compliance in a desert survival game. The results showed that participants evaluated the robot as more credible when labelled as expert, compared to when labelled as novice. The results of a mediation analysis also showed that perceived credibility successfully mediated the effect of title on cooperation and compliance when there was a conflict in the ranking order of items between each participant and the robot. Implications for future development of artificial intelligence and future research directions are discussed.