Trust and Conformity when Interacting with a Group of Robots

Abstract

My research studies the relation between trust and conformity with a group of robots and what specific aspects of robots causes people to trust in them. An experimental setup was devised which allows us to measure if a group of robots can cause conformity in participants. In our setup, participants play a game in which they give a preliminary and a final answer. We measure how often participants change their answer to match the answer of the group of robots. Results in preliminary studies show that robots are capable of causing conformity and that trust in the robots plays a role in deciding to conform. Future research will study different factors (for example the type of robots or the size of group) that play a role in deciding whether to trust and therefore conform to a group of robots.