Trust in Robots Versus Trust in Humans

Human-robot interactions requiring trust are increasingly common in the marketplace, workplace, on the road, and in the home, yet little is known about human willingness to make trust-based investments with non-human agents (i.e., “robots”) and the emotional reactions these interactions elicit. Using a between-subjects design, we compare human investment and emotions from a trust game with people to investment and emotions from a nearly identical trust game (a.k.a. a “risk game”) with a robot. Between treatments we found different emotional reactions but no differences in investment behavior. Conflicted emotions were not reported following trust-game interactions with robots in the way they were with humans. These results highlight a unique emotional facet of human interaction while providing support for recalibration models of emotions and trust. For an expanded study with these and additional results, developed since this working paper was produced, see the more recent "Trust in Humans, Robots, and Cyborgs: Treated the Same, But Experienced Differently." by Eric Schniter, Timothy Shields, and Daniel Sznycer