Would You Like to Play with Me? How Robots’ Group Membership and Task Features Influence Human–Robot Interaction

In the present experiment, we investigated how robots' social category membership and characteristics of an HRI task affect humans' evaluative and behavioral reactions toward robots. Participants (N = 38) played a card game together with two robots, one belonging to participants' social in-group and the other one being a social out-group member. Furthermore, participants were either asked to cooperate with the in- and to compete with the out-group robot (congruent condition), or they were asked to cooperate with the out-group robot while competing with the in-group robot (incongruent condition). The results largely support our hypotheses: Participants showed more positive evaluative reactions toward the in-group (vs. the out-group) robot and they anthropomorphized it more strongly, independent of the congruency or incongruence of the HRI. Moreover, if required, participants cooperated with both the in- and the out-group robot, whereas their cooperativeness was more pronounced toward the in-group robot. Finally, participants indicated more difficulties with the HRI in the incongruent vs. the congruent condition. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings ar discussed.