Measurement of negative attitudes toward robots

TLDR

Recent research has focused on communication robots that interact with humans in daily life, and future work includes cross‑national comparisons of robot attitudes. The study aims to develop measurement methods for negative attitudes toward robots and to examine how these attitudes influence the use of communication robots in daily‑life services. A three‑subscale negative‑attitude scale was developed from 263 Japanese university students and then administered to 240 students to assess its validity and reliability. Analyses of the data confirm the scale’s validity and reliability, offering insights into negative attitudes toward robots.

Abstract

A great deal of research has been performed recently on robots that feature functions for communicating with humans in daily life, i.e., communication robots. We consider it important to develop methods to measure humans’ attitudes and emotions that may prevent them from interaction with communication robots, as indices to study short-term and long-term interaction between humans and communication robots. This study is aimed at exploring the influence of negative attitudes toward robots, focusing on applications of communication robots to daily-life services. First, a scale of negative attitudes toward robots consisting of three subordinate scales, “negative attitudes toward situations of interaction with robots,” “negative attitudes toward the social influence of robots,” and “negative attitudes toward emotions in interaction with robots,” was developed based on a data sample comprising of 263 Japanese university students. This scale was administered to 240 Japanese university students to confirm its validity and reliability. In this paper, we report on the results of analyses of these data samples. Moreover, we discuss some future problems including a comparison of attitudes toward robots between nations.