Is a humorous robot more trustworthy?

Abstract

As more and more social robots are being used for collaborative activities with humans, it is crucial to investigate mechanisms to facilitate trust in the human-robot interaction. One such mechanism is humour: it has been shown to increase creativity and productivity in human-human interaction, which has an indirect influence on trust. In this study, we investigate if humour can increase trust in human-robot interaction. We conducted a between-subjects experiment with 40 participants to see if the participants are more likely to accept the robot's suggestion in the Three-card Monte game, as a trust check task. Though we were unable to find a significant effect of humour, we discuss the effect of possible confounding variables, and also report some interesting qualitative observations from our study: for instance, the participants interacted effectively with the robot as a team member, regardless of the humour or no-humour condition.