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Responses to Human and Robot Errors in Human‒Robot Collaboration: An fNIRS Study

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Cross-Cultural Design (HCII 2024)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14702))

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Abstract

Performance assessment in the era of human‒robot collaboration poses new challenges. Will human managers display varying responses to the success and failure of human versus robot employees? This study aims to investigate people’s responses to success and errors made by humans compared to those made by robots using self-report measures and neuroimaging techniques. Twenty-four participants were asked to imagine themselves as managers tasked with reviewing videos of human‒robot collaboration and evaluating the human and robot employees in the video. Results showed that, when the employee performed correctly, participants assigned more credit to the employee and showed stronger positive emotions when the employee was a robot than a human. When the employee made an error and caused failure, participants attributed more blame to the employee and showed stronger negative emotions when the employee was a human than a robot. Additionally, employee errors resulted in decreased trust, and the trust damage caused by human errors was higher than that caused by robot errors. Furthermore, the functional near-infrared spectroscopy technique showed that viewing robot errors caused decreased activation in the prefrontal cortex. These findings enrich our understanding of attribution, trust, and emotions in human‒robot collaboration from the perspective of human managers, providing practical managerial implications.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China 71942005.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China

    Fengyuan Liu & Xin Lei

  2. Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Yishu Ji & Pei-Luen Patrick Rau

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Correspondence to Pei-Luen Patrick Rau .

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  1. Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Pei-Luen Patrick Rau

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Liu, F., Ji, Y., Lei, X., Rau, PL.P. (2024). Responses to Human and Robot Errors in Human‒Robot Collaboration: An fNIRS Study. In: Rau, PL.P. (eds) Cross-Cultural Design. HCII 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14702. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-60913-8_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-60913-8_19

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