S/he's too Warm/Agentic! The Influence of Gender on Uncanny Reactions to Robots

Gender stereotypes are strong influences on human behavior. Given our tendency to anthropomorphize, incorporating gender cues into a robot's design can influence acceptance by humans. However, little is known about the interaction between human and robot gender. We focus on the role of gender in eliciting negative, “uncanny” reactions from observers. We create a corpus of YouTube videos featuring robots with female, male and no gender cues. Our experiment is grounded in Gray and Wegner's (2012) model, which holds that uncanny reactions are driven by the perception of robot agency (i.e., ability to plan and control) and experience (i.e., ability to feel), which in turn, is driven by robot appearance and behavior. Participants watched videos and completed questionnaires to gauge perceptions of robots as well as affective reactions. We used Structural Equation Modeling to test whether the model explains reactions of both men and women. For gender-neutral robots, it does. However, we find a salient human-robot gender interaction. Men's uncanny reactions to robots with female cues are best predicted by the perception of experience, while women's negativity toward masculine robots is driven by perceived agency. The result is interpreted in light of the “Big Two” dimensions of person perception, which underlie expectations for women to be warm and men to be agentic. When a robot meets these expectations, it increases the chances of an uncanny reaction in the other-gender observer.