Performing a Task Alongside a Robot: Exploring the Impact of Social Comparison

As robots become common in our environment, they are predicted to perform tasks alongside humans. Social psychology studies indicate that performing tasks next to others leads to social comparison. The tendency to overestimate robots' capabilities is predicted to lead to an upward comparison that can result in negative outcomes. We evaluated whether performing a task alongside a robot would impact participants' sense of control and their overall performance. Participants performed a search task either before or alongside a robotic dog that performed search training. Our findings indicated that performing the task alongside the robot led to a negative impact on sense of control, search efficiency, and performance accuracy. We conclude that robot designers should carefully consider the impact of robots who perform tasks alongside humans, even when there is no collaboration and when there is independence between the performance of the human and that of the robot.