In this study, 153 people were divided into 51 groups, with each group composed of three humans and a robot. They were asked to play a tablet-based game in which members of a group will work together to build the most efficient railroad routes over 30 rounds.
Groups were assigned to one of three different types of robot behaviour. At the end of each round, robots either remained silent; uttered a neutral, task-related statement (such as the score or number of rounds completed); or expressed vulnerability through a joke, personal story, or by acknowledging a mistake. All of the robots occasionally lost a round.
Results showed that people teamed with robots that made vulnerable statements spent about twice as much time talking to each other during the game and reported enjoying the experience more compared to people in the other two kinds of groups.
Through these results, it can be said, then, that robots can affect human-to-human interactions. What does this mean for the future? It might be that we will talk to each other more because of these vulnerable robots.
Check out Cosmos Magazine for more details about this study.
(Image Credit: Pixabay)