The Impact of Group Composition and Visual Group Token on Outsiders’ Perceived Groupness of Human-Robot Mixed Groups

When social robots are joining human teams it is relevant to not only study the social dynamics within these human-robot mixed groups but also to explore whether outsiders perceive them as groups. Perceiving higher or lower groupness of mixed groups potentially influences which expectations individuals have towards the group, its human and importantly its robot members. We examined how much outsiders perceive differently composed human-robot groups as a group. In a between-subjects video-based online study, participants rated videos of group interactions with diverse group compositions (i.e., 1 robot with 3 humans, 2 robots with 2 humans, and 3 robots with 1 human) whose members either did or did not wear a visual group token (i.e., the same wristband) regarding the perceived groupness. Group composition and visual token influenced perceived groupness with a group of 1 human and 3 robots being less perceived as a group. Visual tokens enhanced group perceptions. This research contributes to our comprehension of how people perceive human-robot groups.