What are people's associations of domestic robots? Comparing implicit and explicit measures

The acceptability of robots in homes does not depend solely on the practical benefits they may provide, but also on complex relationships between cognitive, affective and emotional components of people's associations of and attitudes towards robots. This important area of research mainly relies on explicit measures, and alternative measures are rather unexplored. We therefore studied both implicit and explicit associations of robots, and found inconsistent findings between implicit and explicit measures. Our findings speak in favor of the proposition that people are actually more negative about robots than they consciously express. Since associations play an important role when people form attitudes towards robots we stress that caution when researchers and designers solely rely on explicit measures in their research.