The influence of Anthropomorphism on 4- to 6- Year-Old Children’s Trust in Robots

Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2024-05-08

Yang Yijin Jiang Yuwei Mao Keyu Li Tingyu Chen Yiqun Zhu Liqi

Abstract： With the advent of the era of human-robot coexistence, robots gradually penetrate into children’s lives. Robots play an important role in children’s study and life, and effective human-robot interaction is conducive to robots to play a greater role. Trust is one of the prerequisites for effective interaction between humans and robots. Do children trust robots the same as trusting people? As the trend of robot development, how does anthropomorphism affect children’s trust in robots? This research adopted the trust game paradigm of Berg et al. (1995) and Evans et al. (2013). The trust behavior of children aged 4-6 in the economic game was investigated through two experiments. At the same time, anthropomorphic factors that may affect children’s trust in robots are investigated, including anthropomorphic appearance (anthropomorphic appearance) and anthropomorphic behavior (verbal feedback and social contingent interaction). In the first experiment, by investigating children’s trust behavior in robots NAO and JIBO (high anthropomorphism VS low anthropomorphism) in anonymous trust game, it was found that the trust of 4-year-old children in robots was significantly lower than that of 5-year-old and 6-year-old children. However, the influence of appearance anthropomorphism only appears in 6-year-old children, and the trust of children is positively correlated with the degree of appearance anthropomorphism of robots. In the second experiment, the robot was made to have anthropomorphic behavior by using WeChat video calls with people, NAO and JIBO, and the trust behavior of children to different trust objects was investigated in the anonymous trust game, and the role of anthropomorphic behavior was investigated. The results show that children’s trust can be significantly improved when the robot had anthropomorphic behavior characteristics. It can be seen that the trust of children aged 4~6 in robots is not only related to their age, but also influenced by the anthropomorphism of robots (anthropomorphism in appearance and anthropomorphism in behavior), and the degree of anthropomorphism is positively related to children’s trust behavior.

Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review

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