posted on 2003-01-01, 00:00authored byAaron Powers, Sara Kiesler, Jennifer Goetz
A robot’s appearance and behavior provide cues to the robot’s abilities and propensities. We hypothesize that an appropriate match between a robot’s social cues and
its task will improve people’s acceptance of and cooperation with the robot. In an experiment, people systematically preferred robots for jobs when the robot’s
human likeness matched the sociability required in those jobs. In two other experiments, people complied more with
a robot whose demeanor matched the seriousness of the task.