Modeling user perceptions of being watched: toward context-sensitive robotic eye design

As social robots enter everyday environments as ubiquitous companions, they provide opportunities such as personalized support and enhanced safety, but also introduce challenges for heightened concerns over privacy and surveillance. Addressing these socio-technical factors requires empirical evidence on how technical features of robots elicit psychological responses. This study investigates the influence of robot eye features on public self-awareness in observation-only contexts through a between-participants experiment (N = 650). A follow-up study (N = 201) examined the moderating role of individual differences in social anxiety. Results show that visually complex eyes and blinking behavior indirectly increase public self-awareness through enhanced perceived agency. Moreover, under high-agency conditions, participants with high social anxiety reported significantly greater public self-awareness than those with low social anxiety. Based on the findings, we propose IMROSF, a structural equation model that explains the effect of the appearance of peripheral robots on public self-awareness. These findings provides empirical evidence on the effects of robot eye design and underscores the social implications of treating robotic eyes as adaptive interfaces for managing users' awareness of being evaluated.