Perception of Power and Distance in Human-Human and Human-Robot Role-Based Relations

The use and interpretation of social linguistic strategies such as politeness is influenced by multiple factors, e.g., the speaker-hearer relation. Such relations influence an inter-locutor's expectations regarding the interaction and thus also its perception. This makes speaker-hearer relations constituting a partner model highly relevant for the user experience in human-robot interaction as well. This paper presents a questionnaire-based study on the perception of human-robot relations in comparison to human-human relations across different roles (e.g., colleague, assistant) and spaces of interaction (home, work, public). It was found that participants perceive robots differently based on space, as they do for human-human relations in corresponding roles. Overall, humans were evaluated to have more power over and more distance to a robot interaction partner compared to another human. Our results provide insights into an intuitive interaction-initial partner model based on roles.