Pimp my language! The influence of robot customization duration on psychological ownership and trust

Involving users in the design of novel technologies, for instance, by adapting them to personal preferences, can improve attitudes and trust towards them. Research on the customization of robot functionalities is still scarce, with existing work predominantly focusing on the impact of perceived, rather than actual user involvement in the design process. Furthermore, it is unclear whether the effects of customization depend on merely choosing options, or on actively implementing these options. Thus, in the present online experiment, we investigated whether actual time invested in choosing options (i.e., words that a robot would learn) and implementing them (i.e., defining the words to a robot in the individual’s own terms) influenced psychological ownership and trust towards the robot. Contrary to our hypotheses, time invested in choosing options slightly decreased perceived control and psychological ownership over the robot. This might be due to task difficulty, which hints at the role of perceived self-efficacy as a determinant of psychological ownership. No effect of time spent in implementing the chosen words by defining them has been found.