Cuteness and Robot Acceptance

Abstract

With robots becoming ubiquitous in modern society, robot acceptance has attracted the interest of researchers and the public. Extensive research has examined technological factors that affect robot acceptance. However, few studies have investigated whether and how appearance features of robots influence people’s acceptance of robots, especially from the psychological perspective. To fill this gap, the present research focuses on cuteness, an important but unstudied appearance feature of robots, and examined its effect on robot acceptance.

Four studies provided evidence for the effect of cuteness on robot acceptance. Study 1 developed a measurement of sensitivity and responsiveness to cuteness (Study 1.1 and 1.2) and confirmed its positive associations with cuteness rating and robot acceptance (Study 1.3). Study 2 explored the underlying mechanism behind the effect of cuteness on robot acceptance from the perspective of mind perception theory (Study 2.1~2.3). Study 3 investigated the moral consequences of cuteness in humans (Study 3.1), animals (Study 3.2), companies (Study 3.3), brands (Study 3.4), and especially in robots (Study 3.5 and 3.6). Study 4 examined people’s preference for human-robot relationship (Study 4.1 to 4.3), and its relationship with cuteness (Study 4.4).

Through survey studies and experiments, the present research found that people who have greater sensitivity and responsiveness to cuteness tend to rate robots as cute, and they have more positive attitude, more purchase intention and usage intention of robots (Study 1). From the perspective of mind perception theory, the underlying mechanism behind the effect of cuteness on robot acceptance is high perceived experience (Study 2). Cuteness of moral transgressors leads to more lenient moral judgments of them, and cuteness can decrease people’s blame on robots in moral dilemmas (Study 3). In addition, people prefer robots that play the role of partners. People’s belief of human-robot relationship is related to their perception of cuteness and has an effect on robot acceptance (Study 4).

Taken together, the present research demonstrates that cuteness of robots can increase people’s robot acceptance, including their attitude, purchase intention and usage intention of robots. In addition, the underlying mechanism behind the effect of cuteness on robot acceptance is perceived high experience. Anthropomorphism is the boundary condition of the effect of cuteness on robot acceptance, and the effect is also influenced by human-robot relationship. This research contributes not only to our understanding of the influential factors of robot acceptance, but also to numerous companies that design and manufacture robots.

Date of Award	22 Jul 2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Samuel M.Y. HO (Supervisor), Feng Yu (Supervisor), Feng Yu (External Supervisor) & Xiaoli NI (External Supervisor)