The role of social robots as advisors for decision making is investigated. We examined how robot advisors, one with logical reasoning and one with cognitive fallacies, affected participants' decision making under different contexts. The participants were asked to make multiple decisions, while advice from both robots interleaved the decision making process. Participants had to choose which robot they agreed with, and in the end of the scenario, rank the possible options presented to them. After the interaction, participants were asked to assign roles to the robots, e.g. detective, bartender. Our results show that the robots had an effect on the participants' responses, wherein participants changed their decisions based on the robot they agreed with more. Moreover, the context, presented as two different scenarios, also had an effect on preferred robots, wherein an art auction scenario resulted in significantly increased agreement with the fallacious robot, whereas a detective scenario did not. Finally, personality traits, e.g. agreeableness and neuroticism, and attitudes towards robots, had an impact on which robot was assigned to these roles. Taken together, the results presented here shows that social robot's effects on participants' decision making are a complex interaction between context, robots' cognitive fallacies and participants' attitudes and personalities, and could not be considered as a single psychological construct.
Attitudinal Change in Elderly Citizens Toward Social Robots: The Role of Personality Traits and Beliefs About Robot Functionality
