Cheery Companions or Serious Assistants? Role and Demeanor Congruity as Predictors of Robot Attraction and Use Intentions Among Senior Citizens

• In Event: Emotive Expression Effects in Technology-Mediated Communication

Abstract

Using a robot designed for the elderly in a naturalistic, retirement home setting, an experiment (N = 59) was conducted to investigate whether variations in the role (companion vs. assistant) and social demeanor (playful vs. serious) of a robot influence senior citizens’ perceptions of the robot’s social attraction, intelligence, anxiety, and eeriness. Study results show that assistant robots are perceived as more socially attractive and intelligent if their demeanor is playful rather than serious. In addition, companion robots were evaluated as less anxious and less eerie when their personality was serious rather than playful. Finally, analyses of indirect effects show that companion robots with a serious demeanor have a positive serial indirect effect on robot use intentions via heightened perceptions of intelligence and social attraction, while assistant robots with a playful demeanor have a positive indirect effect on intentions via lower perceptions of anxiety. These findings test and extend the assumptions of prominent theories pertaining to human-robot communication (CASA and uncanny valley) and inform the successful design of socially assistive robotics for the elderly.

Authors

• Eun Hwa Jung, Pennsylvania State University

• Thomas Franklin Waddell, Penn State

• Ki Joon Kim, Sungkyunkwan U

• S. Shyam Sundar, Pennsylvania State U and Sungkyunkwan Univ