The Relationship Between Perceived Agency and Trust in Robots

Abstract It is well known that the competency and integrity of a robot impacts how much a person will trust it. In this paper, we suggest that perceived agency of the robot is also an important determinant of how much people will trust a robot. Experiment one showed that people trusted a robot that followed social norms more than a robot that did not follow social norms. We also found that people trusted robots that followed social norms more than robots that violated social norms. Experiment one also showed that people who rate a robot as having more agency trust the robot more, even when that robot violates social norms. Experiment two replicated those findings and showed that pre-existing negative attitudes of robots did not impact our findings. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of these findings.