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Robotic Chef Versus Human Chef: The Effects of Anthropomorphism, Novel Cues, and Cooking Difficulty Level on Food Quality Prediction

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Abstract

Robots have been increasingly common in hospitality and tourism, especially being favored under the threat of COVID-19. However, people generally do not think robots are appropriate for cooking food in hotels and restaurants, possibly because they hold low quality predictions for robot-cooked food. This study aimed to investigate the factors influencing people’s quality prediction for robot-cooked food. In three experiments, participants viewed pictures of human and robotic chefs and dishes cooked by them, and then made food quality predictions and rated their perceptions of the chefs. The results showed that participants predicted the foods cooked by robotic chefs were above average quality; however, they consistently held lower food quality prediction for robotic chefs than human chefs, regardless of dishes’ cooking difficulty level, novel cues in chefs and food, or the anthropomorphism level of robotic chefs. The results also showed that increasing the appearance of robotic chefs from low or medium to high anthropomorphism, or enabling robotic chefs to cook high cooking difficulty level food could promote food quality prediction. These results revealed the current acceptance of robot-cooked food, suggesting possible ways to improve food quality predictions.

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Data Availability

Data and materials are available upon request from the first author.

Notes

  1. The pilot study was similar to Experiment 1. Forty-two University students viewed three pictures of a robotic chef (with two humanoid arms) and three pictures of a human chef cooking food. After viewing each chef, participants viewed and rated three Chinese dishes respectively with low, medium, and high cooking difficulty level. The pictures of chefs and dishes differed from those used in Experiment 1.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Anyi Gu for her work in the pilot study.

Funding

This study was funded by the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant Number 21BSH045), the Major Projects of Philosophy and Social Science Research in Jiangsu Universities (Grant Number 2018SJZDA020), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 61876079).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Chengli Xiao & Liqian Zhao

Authors
  1. Chengli Xiao
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  2. Liqian Zhao
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Contributions

All authors contributed to designing the research. LZ conducted the study and collected data. CX analyzed the data and took the lead in writing the manuscript. All authors approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chengli Xiao.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

The ethics committee of psychology research of Nanjing University approved the study (approval number NJUPSY202004001). Written informed consent was obtained from each participant before the experiments began.

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Appendix

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Table 2 Measurements of food quality prediction and perception of chefs in English and Chinese
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Xiao, C., Zhao, L. Robotic Chef Versus Human Chef: The Effects of Anthropomorphism, Novel Cues, and Cooking Difficulty Level on Food Quality Prediction. Int J of Soc Robotics 14, 1697–1710 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-022-00896-9

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