Gender and Persuasive Messages in Human-Robot Interaction

Abstract

In an increasingly connected and technological world, robots have become increasingly more social. Humans have the tendency to attribute human traits to social robots, however, it is not yet known what the exact implications of this are. In human-robot interaction, more and more research focuses on finding out what principles of social psychology and human- human interaction generalize to human-robot interaction. Recent literature has yielded inconclusive results on whether robot gender impacts its persuasive capabilities. In this quantitative study, it was investigated whether the gender of a social robot impacted its ability to persuade humans, and if yes, how. Three factors were taken into account, namely, robot gender, participant gender, and persuasive strategy. In a video-based experiment, participants (N = 231) provided their opinions on robots twice. These results were compared. Results of this study do not provide evidence that the gender of the robot impacted the persuasive capabilities of the robot. Partial evidence was found that a female social robot was perceived as more persuasive than a male social robot. No statistical differences were found based on participant gender or persuasive strategy. However, participants’ opinions on robots improved after the manipulation. This implies that people, regardless of their gender, are capable of being persuaded by a robot. Further research is needed to fully understand the complex interactions that are at play for persuasive robots.