Theory of Mind and Delegation to Robotic Virtual Agents

Despite already being commonplace, delegation to robotic virtual agents (VAs) is often considered challenging and error-prone in critical situations by the general public. Theory of mind, the human capacity to take another person's perspective, is deemed an important enabler for human-human cooperation. This study explores the effect of a robotic VA's ability to use theory of mind on users' delegation behavior. To this end, we conducted a between-subjects experiment with participants playing the Colored Trails game with robotic VAs of varying levels of theory of mind. The results invalidate our hypothesis that the ToM level is a reliable indicator of delegation choices. Instead, we found that the participants' performance strongly correlates with their delegatory intentions. Therefore, to facilitate delegation, designers of robots and robotic agents may consider refraining from using ToM-resemblance features and focusing on balancing user performance perception instead to induce the desired delegation behaviors.