No Name, No Voice, Less Trust: Robot Group Identity Performance, Entitativity, and Trust Distribution

Abstract

Human interactions with robot groups are more complex than interactions with individual robots. This is especially true for groups of robots that do not have humanlike 1-1 associations between bodies and identities, such as when multiple robots share a single identity. This is further complicated by the lack of direct observability of the relationship between body and identity, which may be inferred by users on the basis of various robot group identity performance strategies. Previous research on Deconstructed Trustee Theory has argued that this complexity is critical, as different perceived bodyidentity configurations may lead users to build and develop trust in distinct ways. In this paper, we thus investigate (n=94) the ways that different robot group identity performance strategies might influence the distribution of trust amongst robot group members, as well as the impact of these strategies on perceptions of robot group entitativity.