The Role of Robot Competence, Autonomy, and Personality on Trust Formation in Human-Robot Interaction

TL;DR

The paper investigates how robot competence, autonomy, and personality shape cognitive and affective trust and the willingness to delegate tasks in task-oriented human-robot interaction. Using a 2x2x2 online experiment with the NAO humanoid and a construction-tower task, it measures cognitive trust, affective trust, and delegation, and applies path analysis to examine mediation. Key findings show competence drives all trust dimensions and delegation, while personality primarily boosts affective trust; autonomy moderates certain relations and enhances delegation when paired with competence and agreeable personality. The results highlight cognitive trust as the primary mediator for delegation, offering design guidance for social robots to optimize trust and collaborative performance in real-world settings.

Abstract

Human trust in social robots is a complex attitude based on cognitive and emotional evaluations, as well as a behavior, like task delegation. While previous research explored the features of robots that influence overall trust attitude, it remains unclear whether these features affect behavioral trust. Additionally, there is limited investigation into which features of robots influence cognitive and emotional attitudes, and how these attitudes impact humans' willingness to delegate new tasks to robots. This study examines the interplay between competence, autonomy, and personality traits of robots and their impact on trust attitudes (cognitive and affective trust) and trust behavior (task delegation), within the context of task-oriented Human-Robot Interaction. Our findings indicate that robot competence is a key determinant of trust, influencing cognitive, affective, and behavioral trust. In contrast, robot personality traits significantly impact only affective trust without affecting cognitive trust or trust behavior. In addition, autonomy was found to moderate the relationship between competence and cognitive trust, as well as between personality and affective trust. Finally, cognitive trust was found to positively influence task delegation, whereas affective trust did not show a significant effect. This paper contributes to the literature on Human-Robot Trust by providing novel evidence that enhances the acceptance and effectiveness of social robots in collaborative scenarios.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: The interface through which the action to be performed by the robot was delegated. The 'Goal to Achieve' section displayed the final tower to be built, while the 'Current State' section illustrated the present state of the construction.
• Figure 2: An example of a physical action performed by the robot after human delegation, along with its outcome in the robot virtual working space: (a) The robot communicated its intention to perform the delegated action, (b) the robot approached the console and pressed the button, resulting in the corresponding geometric shape being moved in the virtual workspace (c) the robot returned in the starting position and communicated that the action has been completed. The final result in the web interface was the movement of the piece to the right section of the table, highlighted by a red outline.
• Figure 3: Line chart of the interaction effect of robot Autonomy and Competence on Cognitive Trust. When the robot was competent, participants showed higher cognitive trust when the robot was autonomous.
• Figure 4: Line chart of the interaction effect of robot Autonomy and Personality on Affective Trust. When the robot was disagreeable, autonomy resulted in higher affective trust.
• Figure 5: Line chart of the interaction effect of robot Competence, Autonomy and Personality on Task Delegation. Participants valued a competent and autonomous robot only when it was agreeable, while disagreeableness made them indifferent to its autonomy or competence.