The effect of social-cognitive recovery strategies on likability, capability and trust in social robots

Abstract As robots become more prevalent, particularly in complex public and domestic settings, they will be increasingly challenged by dynamic situations that could result performance errors. Such errors can have a harmful impact on user’s trust confidence the technology, potentially reducing use preventing full realization of its benefits. A potential countermeasure, based social psychological concepts trust, is for to demonstrate self-awareness ownership their mistakes mitigate increase users’ affinity towards robot. We describe an experiment examining 326 people’s perceptions mobile guide robot employs synthetic behaviours elicit after error. find identifies mistake, communicates intention rectify situation, considered observers capable than one simply apologizes mistake. However, latter likeable and, uniquely, increases These outcomes highlight multifaceted nature human–robot interaction may extend beyond established approaches considering robots’ capability indicate cognitive models are valuable developing trustworthy agents.