Abstract
A complex relationship exists between people’s cultural background and their general acceptance towards robots. Previous studies supported the idea that humans may accept more easily a robot that can adapt to their specific culture. However, it is not clear whether between two robots which are identified as foreign robots because of their verbal and non-verbal expressions, the one that is culturally closer may be preferred or not. In this experiment, participants of Dutch nationality were engaged in a simulated video conference with a robot that is greeting and speaking either in German or in Japanese; they completed a questionnaire assessing their preferences and their emotional state. As Dutch participant showed less signs of discomfort and better acceptance when interacting with a German robot, the hypothesis that acceptance of a robot could be directly proportional to cultural closeness was supported, while the hypothesis that similar foreign robots are equally less accepted regardless of the countrywas rejected. Implications are discussed for how robots should be designed to be employed in different countries.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Eyssel, F., Kuchenbrandt, D.: Social categorization of social robots: anthropomorphism as a function of robot group membership. Br. J. Social Psychology 51, 724–731 (2012)
Asimov, I.: The Machine and the Robot. Science Fiction: Contemporaty Mythology. In: Warrick, P.S., Greenberg, M.H., Olander, J.D. (eds.) Harper and Row (1978)
Bartneck, C., Nomura, T., Kanda, T., et al.: Cultural Differences in Attitudes Towards Robots. In: Proceedings of the AISB Convention: Symposium on Robot Companions (2005)
Wagner, C.: The Japanese way of robotics: interacting naturally with robots as a national character? RO-MAN 2009, 510–515 (2009)
Rogers, E.M.: Diffusion of Innovations, 5th edn. Free Press (2003)
Otten, S., Moskowitz, G.B.: Evidence for Implicit Evaluative In-Group Bias: Affect-Biased Spontaneous Trait Inference in a Minimal Group Paradigm. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 36, 77–89 (2000). doi:10.1006/jesp.1999.1399
Reeves, B., Nass, C.: The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places. Cambridge University Press (1996)
Suzuki, S., Fujimoto, Y., Yamaguchi, T.: Can differences of nationalities be induced and measured by robot gesture communication ? In: 2011 4th International Conference on Human System Interactions (HSI), pp. 357–362 (2011)
Kogut, B., Singh, H.: The Effect of National Culture on the Choice of Entry Mode. Journal of International Business Studies 19, 411–432 (1988)
Kandogan, Y.: An improvement to Kogut and Singh measure of cultural distance considering the relationship among different dimensions of culture. Research in International Business and Finance 26, 196–203 (2012). doi:10.1016/j.ribaf.2011.11.001
Yeganeh, H.: A generic conceptualization of the cultural distance index. Journal of Strategy and Mgt 4, 325–346 (2011). doi:10.1108/17554251111180990
Babiker, I.E., Cox, J.L., Miller, P.M.: The measurement of cultural distance and its relationship to medical consultations, symptomatology and examination performance of overseas students at Edinburgh University. Soc. Psychiatry 15, 109–116 (1980)
Hall, E.: Beyond culture. Anchor, Garden City (1977)
Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G.J., Minkov, M.: Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, 3rd edn. McGraw-Hill, New York (2010)
Lewis, R.D.: Cross Cultural Communication: A Visual Approach. Transcreen Public (1999)
Welzel, C., Inglehart, R., Klingemann, H.-D.: The Theory of Human Development: A Cross-Cultural Analysis. European Journal of Political Research 42, 341–379 (2003)
Nils-Johan, J.: Culture and Power in Germany and Japan: The Spirit of Renewal. Global Oriental Ltd, Folkstone (2006)
Trovato, G., Zecca, M., Sessa, S., et al.: Cross-cultural study on human-robot greeting interaction: acceptance and discomfort by Egyptians and Japanese. Paladyn International Journal of Behavioral Robotics 4, 83–93 (2013). doi:10.2478/pjbr-2013-0006
Endo, N., Takanishi, A.: Development of Whole-Body Emotional Expression Humanoid Robot for ADL-Assistive RT Services. J of Robotics and Mechatronics 23, 969–977 (2011)
Bartneck, C., Kulić, D., Croft, E., Zoghbi, S.: Measurement Instruments for the Anthropomorphism, Animacy, Likeability, Perceived Intelligence, and Perceived Safety of Robots. Int J of Soc Robotics 1, 71–81 (2009). doi:10.1007/s12369-008-0001-3
Endrass, B., André, E., Rehm, M., Nakano, Y.: Investigating culture-related aspects of behavior for virtual characters. Auton Agent Multi-Agent Syst. 27, 277–304 (2013). doi:10.1007/s10458-012-9218-5
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Trovato, G., Ham, J.R.C., Hashimoto, K., Ishii, H., Takanishi, A. (2015). Investigating the Effect of Relative Cultural Distance on the Acceptance of Robots. In: Tapus, A., André, E., Martin, JC., Ferland, F., Ammi, M. (eds) Social Robotics. ICSR 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9388. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25554-5_66
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25554-5_66
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-25553-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-25554-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)