Anthropomorphic inferences from emotional nonverbal cues: A case study

We examined the effects of a robots' nonverbal response on evaluations of anthropomorphism and other dimensions (e.g., liking, closeness, pleasantness of human-robot interaction) in a case study. Our work both conceptually replicates and extends previous research: On the one hand, we replicated previous findings and generalized them to a different robot type, the iCat. On the other hand, our work extends existing research in that it includes a wider range of dependent variables, with a particular focus on perceptions of anthropomorphism. Taken together, most of our results support the experimental hypotheses for the dependent measures: That is, a robot that provided emotional feedback during the interaction was perceived to be superior to a robot that responded neutrally. Thus, our findings highlight the importance of the interplay of form and function in the attribution of humanness to robots.