Effect of Robot Agents on Teaching Against Pseudoscience

One of the most important problems in science education is teaching about the risks associated with pseudoscience. In this research, we focused on virtual teachers (VTs) that give lessons on pseudoscience. In prior research, the effect of robot teachers in scientific education was demonstrated, and the appearance of VTs was an important factor. Also, it was shown that the effect of logical persuasion and emotional persuasion changed on the basis of the context. Thus, we hypothesize that both the appearance of VTs and their persuasion strategy significantly affects the effect of the lessons through the interaction of the two. To verify this hypothesis, we conducted two-factor and two-levels experiments. One factor was the appearance of the VT: human-like or robot-like. Another was the persuasion strategy: emotional persuasion or logical one. As a result, a significant interaction was shown between the perceived persuasiveness of the VTs and their appearance. When the topic was minus ions' positive effect, the robotlike VT expressing emotional persuasion was perceived as less persuasive than the other VT. However, when the topic was UFOs, the robot-like VT expressing logical persuasion was perceived as less persuasive than the robot-like VT expressing emotional persuasion.