The influence of height in robot-mediated communication

A large body of research in human communication has shown that a person's height plays a key role in how persuasive, attractive, and dominant others judge the person to be. Robotic telepresence systems - systems that combine video-conferencing capabilities with robotic navigation to allow geographically dispersed people to maneuver in remote locations - represent remote users, operators, to local users, locals, through the use of an alternate physical representation. In this representation, physical characteristics such as height are dictated by the manufacturer of the system. We conducted a two-by-two (relative system height: shorter vs. taller; team role: leader vs. follower), between-participants study (n = 40) to investigate how the system's height affects the local's perceptions of the operator and subsequent interactions. Our findings show that, when the system was shorter than the local and the operator was in a leadership role, the local found the operator to be less persuasive. Furthermore, having a leadership role significantly affected the local's feelings of dominance with regard to being in control of the conversation.