Smart Human, Smarter Robot: How Cheating Affects Perceptions of Social Agency

Human-robot interaction studies and human-human interaction studies often obtain similar findings. When manipulating high-level apparent cognitive cues in robots, however, this is not always the case. We investigated to what extent the type of agent (human or robot) and the type of behavior (honest or dishonest) affected perceived features of agency and trustworthiness in the context of a competitive game. We predicted that the human and robot in the dishonest manipulation would receive lower attributions of trustworthiness than the human and robot in the honest manipulation, and that the robot would be perceived as less intelligent and intentional than the human overall. The human and robot in the dishonest manipulation received lower attributions of trustworthiness as predicted, but, surprisingly, the robot was perceived to be more intelligent than the human.