ShakeTime! A deceptive robot referee

We explore deception in the context of a multi-player robotic game. The robot does not participate as a competitor, but is in charge of declaring who wins or loses every round. The robot was designed to deceive game players by imperceptibly balancing how much they won, with the hope this behavior would make them play longer and with more interest. Inducing false belief about who wins the game was accomplished by leveraging paradigms about robot behavior and their better perceptual abilities. Results include the finding that participants were more accepting of lying by our robot than for robots in general. Some participants found the balancing strategy favorable after being debriefed, while others showed less interest due to a perceived level of unfairness.