Forms and Frames: Mind, Morality, and Trust in Robots across Prototypical Interactions

Abstract

People often engage human-interaction schemas in human-robot interactions, so notions of prototypicality are useful in examining how interactions’ formal features shape perceptions of social robots. We argue for a typology of three higher-order interaction forms (social, task, play) comprising identifiable-but-variable patterns in agents, content, structures, outcomes, context, norms. From that ground, we examined whether participants’ judgments about a social robot (mind, morality, and trust perceptions) differed across prototypical interactions. Findings indicate interaction forms somewhat influence trust but not mind or morality evaluations. However, how participants perceived interactions (independent of form) were more impactful. In particular, perceived task interactions fostered functional trust, while perceived play interactions fostered moral trust and attitude shift over time. Hence, prototypicality in interactions should not consider formal properties alone but must also consider how people perceive interactions according to prototypical frames.