Investigating the Mere Exposure Effect in Relation to Perceived Eeriness and Humaneness of a Social Robot

摘要

This paper presents an empirical investigation of the perceived eeriness and perceived humaneness of a social robot, taking into consideration the Mere Exposure Effect. We thus assumed that the perceived eeriness of the robot is rated lower after several exposures to the robot than after a single exposure. We further assumed that the perceived humaneness of the robot does not change with the number of exposures. In an online study containing four videos of the same robot, we assessed participants' ratings in a within-participants design. Our empirical results showed that participants perceived the social robot as significantly less eerie than expected, but contrary to our expectations also less human after it had been presented several times. Notably, participants who had never interacted with the robot before perceived it as significantly less eerie after four exposures, suggesting that the Mere Exposure Effect seems to apply to social robots after more exposures compared to the suggested number of three exposures in a previous meta-review.