Human-robot cooperation in economic games: People show strong reciprocity but conditional prosociality toward robots

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Te-Yi Hsieh ◽  
Bishakha Chaudhury ◽  
Emily S. Cross

Understanding human social interactions with robots is important for designing robots for social tasks. Here, we investigate undergraduate participants’ situational cooperation tendencies towards a robot opponent using prisoner’s dilemma games. With two conditions where incentives for cooperative decisions were manipulated to be high or low, we predicted that people would cooperate more often with the robot in high-incentive conditions. Our results showed incentive structure did not predict human cooperation overall, but did influence cooperation in early rounds, where participants cooperated significantly more in the high-incentive condition. Exploratory analyses revealed other two behavioural tendencies: (1) participants played a tit-for-tat strategy against the robot (whose decisions were random); and (2) participants only behaved prosocially toward the robot when they had achieved high scores themselves. Our findings highlight ways in which social behaviour toward robots might differ from social behaviour toward humans, and inform future work on human–robot interactions in collaborative contexts.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Te-Yi Hsieh ◽  
Bishakha Chaudhury ◽  
Emily S. Cross

Understanding the social dynamics in human-robot cooperation stands to broaden our understanding of human behaviour in general, as well as to improve the design of robots designated for certain social tasks. This study investigated human cooperative behaviours in the context of prisoner’s dilemma (PD) games and the extent to which people’s willingness to cooperate with a robot varies according to incentives provided by the game context. We manipulated the payoff matrices of human-robot PD games and predicted that people would cooperate more often in the situation where cooperating with the robot was a relatively more rewarding option. Although the pre-registered mixed effect logistic regression model showed no significant effect of incentive structure on human decisions in the iterated PD games overall, further exploratory analyses revealed that in early game rounds, participants made significantly more cooperative decisions when the game structure provided more incentives for cooperation. However, subsequent game decisions were dominantly driven by other two factors. The first was the robot’s previous game choices, where participants played a tit-for-tat strategy against the robot even though its decisions were random. Second, presentation of real-time game scores significantly impacted people’s cooperative tendencies. Participants only showed prosocial tendencies toward the robot when they had achieved high scores themselves. Our findings on the initial effects of incentive structure, robust reciprocity, and conditional prosociality in human-robot cooperation highlight ways in which we might expect social behaviour toward robots to differ from social behaviour toward humans, and help to establish the foundations necessary to support successful social collaboration with robots.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey P. Copeland ◽  
Arild Landa ◽  
Kimberly Heinemeyer ◽  
Keith B. Aubry ◽  
Jiska van Dijk ◽  
...  

Social behaviour in solitary carnivores has long been an active area of investigation but for many species remains largely founded in conjecture compared to our understanding of sociality in group-living species. The social organization of the wolverine has, until now, received little attention beyond its portrayal as a typical mustelid social system. In this chapter the authors compile observations of social interactions from multiple wolverine field studies, which are integrated into an ecological framework. An ethological model for the wolverine is proposed that reveals an intricate social organization, which is driven by variable resource availability within extremely large territories and supports social behaviour that underpins offspring development.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (12) ◽  
pp. 4127
Author(s):  
Will Farlessyost ◽  
Kelsey-Ryan Grant ◽  
Sara R. Davis ◽  
David Feil-Seifer ◽  
Emily M. Hand

First impressions make up an integral part of our interactions with other humans by providing an instantaneous judgment of the trustworthiness, dominance and attractiveness of an individual prior to engaging in any other form of interaction. Unfortunately, this can lead to unintentional bias in situations that have serious consequences, whether it be in judicial proceedings, career advancement, or politics. The ability to automatically recognize social traits presents a number of highly useful applications: from minimizing bias in social interactions to providing insight into how our own facial attributes are interpreted by others. However, while first impressions are well-studied in the field of psychology, automated methods for predicting social traits are largely non-existent. In this work, we demonstrate the feasibility of two automated approaches—multi-label classification (MLC) and multi-output regression (MOR)—for first impression recognition from faces. We demonstrate that both approaches are able to predict social traits with better than chance accuracy, but there is still significant room for improvement. We evaluate ethical concerns and detail application areas for future work in this direction.


2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 623-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan P Evans ◽  
Jennifer L Kelley

Polyandry (female multiple mating) can confer important benefits to females, but few studies have considered its potential costs. One such cost may arise through differences in the relatedness of offspring born to females with different mating histories; offspring born to monandrous females are always full siblings, while those produced by polyandrous females may be full or half siblings. These differences may have important consequences for social interactions among offspring. We used artificial insemination in the guppy ( Poecilia reticulata ), a promiscuous live-bearing fish, to evaluate shoaling behaviour in polyandrous and monandrous broods. We combined this information with known parentage data for the polyandrous broods to determine whether sibling relatedness influenced offspring shoaling behaviour. While we detected no effect of mating treatment (polyandry/monandry) on shoaling behaviour, we found that pairs of full siblings spent significantly more time shoaling (and in close proximity) than pairs of half siblings. This latter finding confirms the ability of newborn guppies to distinguish brood mates on the basis of kinship, but also suggests an important and hitherto unrealized potential cost of polyandry: a reduction in within-brood relatedness with potentially important implications for offspring social behaviour.


1980 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. E. Salter

Social interactions in walrus herds of mixed sex and age composition were recorded at a haul-out site on the east coast of Bathurst Island, N.W.T., during July–August 1977. Most walruses maintained body contact with at least one other walrus while hauled out on land; herds were usually circular in shape. Adult males, adult females, and immatures all displaced other walruses, and thus entered herds, by jabbing with the tusks. Dominance during agonistic interactions was related to relative tusk length and sex and age of interactants. Behaviour of walruses on land suggested an energetic advantage in mutual body contact, which would be maximized by occupation of interior positions within herds.


1981 ◽  
Vol 59 (9) ◽  
pp. 1666-1676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gail R. Michener

The development of spatial and social patterns by juvenile Richardson's ground squirrels, from first emergence from the natal burrow to entry into hibernation, is described. Juveniles enter the aboveground population at [Formula: see text] weeks of age. During the next 4 weeks juveniles remain in close spatial proximity to family members with whom they engage in frequent amicable social interactions. Thereafter, juveniles become increasingly independent from the family unit, establishing their own spatially distinct core areas and exhibiting site-dependent dominance toward nonkin. Typically juveniles remain physically closer to and more amicable with littermates and mother than other conspecifics such that they compose kin clusters, the members of which are agonistic toward members of adjacent kin clusters. Daughters are more likely to continue to reside close to kin as adults than are sons. At 9–10 weeks of age juveniles exhibit the majority of spatial and social patterns characteristic of adults, and at 12 weeks they are behaviourally indistinguishable from adults. Similar rapid acquisition of adult patterns occurs in four other species of ground-dwelling sciurids that are also obligate hibernators and that breed immediately following emergence from their first hibernation.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcin T. Górecki ◽  
Natalia Dziwińska

Abstract The aim of this study was to recognize features determining social hierarchy in Wrzosówka Polska ewes kept indoors as well as to investigate their resting place and companionship preferences. Observations (156 hours in total) were carried out in a group of 22 ewes. The social rank of sheep was determined by their age, body weight and length of horns. Social position was positively correlated with aggressive behaviour performed and negatively with aggressive behaviour received. Use of space while resting was influenced by ewe social behaviour; aggressive individuals lied more often in attractive places, namely against walls and fodder troughs compared to other animals. In general, the ewes rested by having physical contact with animals of similar rank and aggressiveness. Kinship appeared not to be important in neighbour preference. As can be concluded, social interactions influenced the use of space and neighbourhood in ewes


Behaviour ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 146 (6) ◽  
pp. 815-830 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shinnosuke Nakayama ◽  
Alfredo Ojanguren ◽  
Lee Fuiman

Abstract Social behaviour is critical for survival and fitness in many organisms. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of developmental state, physiological state and their differences between individuals on the intensities of aggressive and grouping behaviours in red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) larvae. Body size was used as a proxy for developmental state and body condition (i.e., residual of wet weight from the relationship between body size and wet weight) as a measure of physiological condition. Social interactions between two fish were observed for 30 min in a 9-l tank. We found that the duration of grouping behaviour increased as body size increased, but aggressive behaviour was less frequent as body size and condition increased. The larger fish in a trial tended to be aggressive to the smaller one, and fish of similar sizes tended to show grouping behaviour. Fish that more frequently displayed aggressive behaviours tended to occupy the lower part of the water column. Body size and condition were important determinants of social interactions between red drum larvae. Our results suggest competitive disadvantage for the larvae from late cohorts when they recruit to the nursery habitats where larger larvae from early cohorts have already occupied.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Jenikejew ◽  
Brenda Chaignon ◽  
Sabrina Linn ◽  
Marina Scheumann

Abstract Vocal communication networks can be linked to social behaviour, allowing a deeper understanding of social relationships among individuals. For this purpose, the description of vocal dyads is fundamental. In group-living species, this identification is based on behavioural indicators which require a high level of reactivity during social interactions. In the present study, we alternatively established a proximity-based approach to investigate whether sex-specific differences in vocal communication reflect social behaviour in a species with rather loose social associations and low levels of reactivity: the Southern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum simum). We performed audio- and video recordings of 30 captive animals from seven groups. Vocal networks for the four most common call types were constructed by considering conspecifics at close distance (≤ 1 body length) to the sender as potential receivers. The analysis of the resulting unidirectional structures showed that not only the sex of the sender but also the sex of the potential receiver, the quality of social interactions (affiliative or agonistic) as well as association strength predict the intensity of vocal interactions between group members. Thus, a proximity-based approach can be used to construct vocal networks providing information about the social relationships of conspecifics—even in species with loose social associations where behavioural indicators are limited.


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