The Influence of Prior Expectations of a Robot’s Lifelikeness on Users’ Intentions to Treat a Zoomorphic Robot as a Companion

We are, at our roots, social creatures who are designed to bond with others. Given that robots are expected to increasingly serve humans in social roles, insight into the psychological aspects of our relationships with robots is becoming more relevant. Earlier findings indicate a strong role of a robot’s perceived lifelikeness and gender for human–robot companionships. In an experimental study, we tested whether an individual’s gender (male vs. female) and prior expectation of a robot’s lifelikeness (high vs. low) influence the effect of preconditions originally identified for human friendship formation (i.e., proximity, physical attraction, similarity, reciprocal liking, intimacy) on the individual’s intention to treat a zoomorphic robot as a companion. Our results show that when people have high prior expectations of a robot’s lifelikeness, similar variables that explain why people establish relationships with each other are better able to explain their intentions to treat such a zoomorphic robot as a companion. Thus, companion robots should have a lifelike appearance, which does not necessarily mean a humanlike appearance. Moreover, men and women focus on different preconditions for human friendship formation when they evaluate their intentions to treat zoomorphic robots as companions. This means that developers of companion robots should be aware of these gender differences in bonding, and men and women may even prefer different designs, in terms of either appearance or behavior, for their companion robots.