Affective Responses to Trust Violations in a Human-Autonomy Teaming Context: Humans Versus Robots

• Published in: International journal of social robotics Vol. 16; no. 1; pp. 23 - 35
• Main Authors: Alarcon, Gene M., Lyons, Joseph B., Hamdan, Izz aldin, Jessup, Sarah A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 2024; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Control; Engineering; Human performance; Integrity; Mechatronics; Robotics; Robots; Violations; Ability; Human–robot interaction; Benevolence; Trust; Emotions; Integrity
• ISSN: 1875-4791; 1875-4805
• DOI: 10.1007/s12369-023-01017-w

Despite the increasing use of robots in a variety of applications, little is known about the emotional responses humans experience when a robot or a human commits a trust violation. The current paper compares the affective responses of humans paired with either a human or a robot confederate who committed trust violations. Additionally, the current paper utilizes new manipulations in the literature to experimentally manipulate the type of trust violation, namely ability, benevolence, and integrity violations. As expected, when a robot committed an ability violation participants’ positive affect decreased more than if the violation was performed by a human. When an integrity or benevolence violation occurred, participants had a greater decrease in positive affect when a human performed the violations than when a robot violated trust. Overall, participants experienced more negative affect with a human partner than a robot partner. Also, ability violations had stronger effects on negative affect than integrity violations. Results indicate humans do have different affective responses when trust is violated, depending on the type of violation as well as the partner performing the violation. Implications are discussed.