Colleague vs. tool: Effects of disclosure in human-robot collaboration

We report the results of an experiment examining how an autonomous mobile robotpsilas disclosure of task versus affective information influences peoplepsilas feelings about a robot when working on a collaborative task. In a 3 times 2 experiment, we examined disclosure (task, affective and no disclosure) and the trigger that produced the disclosure (automatic vs. on-demand). We hypothesized that a robot disclosing task information would increase peoplepsilas sense of control because it provides awareness about the task situation, but that affective information would decrease peoplepsilas sense of control. We also predicted that people would like robots better when they disclose affective information. Our findings confirm that people both felt less in control and liked the robot more when the robot disclosed its affective state. We further found that providing people with the ability to control disclosure (on demand vs. automatic disclosure), increased their sense of control, but decreased their liking of the robot. This research suggests the need to weigh a potential tradeoff between designing robot collaborators that evoke perceptions of control versus liking. In the discussion, we explore design implications and how different combinations of disclosure types and triggers may optimize both feelings of control and liking in human-robot collaboration.