The Ripple Effects of Vulnerability: The Effects of a Robot’s Vulnerable Behavior on Trust in Human-Robot Teams

Successful teams are characterized by high levels of trust between team members, allowing the team to learn from mistakes, take risks, and entertain diverse ideas. We investigated a robot’s potential to shape trust within a team through the robot’s expressions of vulnerability. We conducted a between-subjects experiment (N = 35 teams, 105 participants) comparing the behavior of three human teammates collaborating with either a social robot making vulnerable statements or with a social robot making neutral statements. We found that, in a group with a robot making vulnerable statements, participants responded more to the robot’s comments and directed more of their gaze to the robot, displaying a higher level of engagement with the robot. Additionally, we discovered that during times of tension, human teammates in a group with a robot making vulnerable statements were more likely to explain their failure to the group, console team members who had made mistakes, and laugh together, all actions that reduce the amount of tension experienced by the team. These results suggest that a robot’s vulnerable behavior can have "ripple effects" on their human team members’ expressions of trust-related behavior.