Prediction of Human Behavior in Human--Robot Interaction Using Psychological Scales for Anxiety and Negative Attitudes Toward Robots

TLDR

When people interact with communication robots, their attitudes and emotions influence their behavior. This study investigates how negative attitudes, anxiety, and communication avoidance affect human‑robot interaction. We measured participants’ negative attitudes (NARS) and robot anxiety (RAS) while they engaged a humanoid robot in meeting, greeting, self‑disclosure, and physical contact scenes. Results show a link between negative attitudes and anxiety with communication avoidance, and suggest a gender effect.

Abstract

When people interact with communication robots in daily life, their attitudes and emotions toward the robots affect their behavior. From the perspective of robotics design, we need to investigate the influences of these attitudes and emotions on human-robot interaction. This paper reports our empirical study on the relationships between people's attitudes and emotions, and their behavior toward a robot. In particular, we focused on negative attitudes, anxiety, and communication avoidance behavior, which have important implications for robotics design. For this purpose, we used two psychological scales that we had developed: negative attitudes toward robots scale (NARS) and robot anxiety scale (RAS). In the experiment, subjects and a humanoid robot are engaged in simple interactions including scenes of meeting, greeting, self-disclosure, and physical contact. Experimental results indicated that there is a relationship between negative attitudes and emotions, and communication avoidance behavior. A gender effect was also suggested.