Social Gaze Differs Between Humans and Androids

Abstract People usually inhibit gaze to other strangers in the same room, but openly look at videos of the same strangers. Hence, social context guides human gaze behavior to others according to predominant social rules. The presence of robot androids is slowly increasing as they are employed in diverse sectors of the life, such as healthcare and service. Therefore, we investigated whether human social rules apply to android robots, specifically, the rule of avoiding to stare at strangers. Thirty-six adult participants’ gaze was measured in a waiting room using a mobile eye-tracker. Participants were divided into three conditions differing in who was present in the waiting room: (1) Android Andrea physically present (Android-Live), (2) a video of the Android played on a PC monitor (Android-Video), or (3) a real human was present (Human-Live). While participants rarely looked at the live human, abiding by the social rule not to stare at strangers, they looked significantly more at the live android and the video. This indicates that social inhibition of gaze is applied to humans, but not to android robots. Participants also completely ignored social conventions towards the robot by walking towards and staring at it. This suggests that overall human social rules are not applied to android robots.