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Women Are Funny: Influence of Apparent Gender and Embodiment in Robot Comedy

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Social Robotics (ICSR 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13086))

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Abstract

Previous robotics work has identified significant effects of perceived gender and embodiment on human perceptions of robots, but these topics have yet to be investigated in the context of robot comedy. The presented study explored the effects of gender and embodiment on audience members’ perceptions of a robotic comedian. Participants (N = 153) observed either an audio-only clip or a video of a robotic comedian, with either a male or a female voice. We measured self-reported ratings of robot attributes. Results showed that neither gender nor physical form influenced joke humorousness or robot attribute ratings, however those who viewed a video of the robot reported feeling more connected to the comedian. These findings suggest that, unlike in past studies of human comedy to date, gender stereotypes and physical appearance may not affect perceptions of robot comedy performance.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oregon State University (OSU), Corvallis, OR, 97331, USA

    Nisha Raghunath, Paris Myers, Christopher A. Sanchez & Naomi T. Fitter

Authors
  1. Nisha Raghunath
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  2. Paris Myers
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  3. Christopher A. Sanchez
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  4. Naomi T. Fitter
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Naomi T. Fitter .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic and Communication Engineering, National University of Singapore, Faculty of Engineering, Singapore, Singapore

    Haizhou Li

  2. The National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shuzhi Sam Ge

  3. A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore, Singapore

    Yan Wu

  4. Center for Human Technologies, Istituto Italiano Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy

    Agnieszka Wykowska

  5. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, USA

    Hongsheng He

  6. Qingdao University, Qingdao, China

    Xiaorui Liu

  7. School of Cyber Science and Technology, Beihang University, Beijing, Beijing, China

    Dongyu Li

  8. Social Cognition Human-Robot Interaction, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy

    Jairo Perez-Osorio

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Raghunath, N., Myers, P., Sanchez, C.A., Fitter, N.T. (2021). Women Are Funny: Influence of Apparent Gender and Embodiment in Robot Comedy. In: Li, H., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13086. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90525-5_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90525-5_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-90524-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-90525-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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