Impact of Gender and Group Size on Right to Speak and Peer Pressure in Human-Robot Interaction

In daily life peer-to-peer interactions, gender and group size (i.e., number of peers engaged) could affect right to speak (RoS) and peer pressure (PP) perceived. Such a fact is explored in human-human peer interactions. However, in the case of human-robot peer interactions, it is not clear whether gender and group size could affect RoS and PP perceived and consequently help us re-shaping conversations and gain control over those. In this research, we addressed such a research gap. We explored the effect of gender and group size on RoS and PP perceived. Two subjective evaluation based experiments were conducted: one depicting online and one depicting face-to-face interactions between human and robot peers. $2 \times 2$ mixed design was adopted for each experiment, where gender with two levels i.e., males and females, was a between subject factor, group size with two levels i.e., one and two robot peers, was a within subject factor, and RoS and PP perceived were the measures. In online interactions, a significant interaction effect between gender and group size was observed on RoS perceived. While, in case of PP perceived, a significant main effect of gender was observed. Contrarily, in face-to-face interactions, a significant main effect of the group size was observed. While, in case of PP perceived, no effect of gender and/or group size was observed.