Improving attitudes towards social robots using imagined contact

Negative attitudes towards robots are common and pose an obstacle for successful and pleasant human-robot interaction. To reduce negative attitudes in the context of social robotics, we draw upon social psychological methods of attitude change. Imagined contact represents one such paradigm which to date has mostly been tested and validated in the human-human intergroup context. In the present experiment, we have therefore examined the effectiveness of imagined contact (i.e., the mere mental simulation of contact with a human or nonhuman target) in changing robot-related attitudes, robot anxiety, contact intentions, and psychological anthropomorphism. To do so, participants had to briefly imagine a restaurant scenario as detailed and lively as possible. Crucially, we manipulated the content of the imagined contact scenario as follows: In the control conditions, participants imagined an interaction with a human target or a technical device. In the experimental condition, in contrast, participants imagined an interaction with a robot target. We predicted that imagined contact with a robot (versus a human target versus a technical device) would result in more positive attitudes towards the robot, stronger contact intentions, and higher psychological anthropomorphism whereas robot anxiety should decrease. Contrary to our predictions, however, we found that participants who had imagined contact with a human target reported more positive attitudes and higher contact intentions with a robot prototype than participants who had imagined contact with a technical device. Furthermore, imagined contact with a robot had no effect on the dependent measures. We interpret these findings in light of potential ceiling effects, fluency effects, and the activation of elicited agent knowledge.