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Inducing Bystander Interventions During Robot Abuse with Social Mechanisms

Authors:

Marynel Vázquez,

Elizabeth J. Carter,

Cecilia G. Morales,

Aaron SteinfeldAuthors Info & Claims

HRI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction

Pages 169 - 177

https://doi.org/10.1145/3171221.3171247

Published: 26 February 2018 Publication History

Abstract

We explored whether a robot can leverage social influences to motivate nearby bystanders to intervene and defend them from human abuse. We designed a between-subjects study where 48 participants took part in a memorization task and observed a confederate mistreating a robot both verbally and physically. The robot was either empathetic towards the participant»s performance in the task or indifferent. When the robot was mistreated, it ignored the abuse, shut down in response to it, or reacted emotionally. We found that the majority of the participants intervened to help the robot after it was abused. Interventions happened for a wide range of reasons. Interestingly, the empathetic robot increased the proportion of participants that self-reported intervening in comparison to the indifferent robot, but more participants moved the robot as a response to abuse in the latter case. The participants also perceived the robot being verbally mistreated more and reported higher levels of personal distress when the robot briefly shut down after abuse in comparison to when it reacted emotionally or did not react at all.

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Cited By

Arzate Cruz CMontiel-Vázquez EMaeda CLam DGomez RJohal WLemaignan SBrščić DVázquez MCharisi V(2025)Empathetic Robots Using Empathy Classifiers in HRI SettingsProceedings of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction10.5555/3721488.3721649(1211-1215)Online publication date: 4-Mar-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3721488.3721649
Rezzani AMenéndez-Blanco MBushman BDe Angeli A(2025)What is robot abuse? A sociotechnical definitionBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2025.2462268(1-19)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2025.2462268
Nishiwaki KBrščić DKanda T(2024)Expressing Anger with Robot for Tackling the Onset of Robot AbuseACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/369646714:1(1-23)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3696467
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Inducing Bystander Interventions During Robot Abuse with Social Mechanisms
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing
    1. Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing
  2. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Empirical studies in HCI

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cover image ACM Conferences

HRI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction

February 2018

468 pages

ISBN:9781450349536

DOI:10.1145/3171221

General Chairs:
Takayuki Kanda
ATR, Japan
,
Selma Ŝabanović
Indiana University Bloomington, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Guy Hoffman
Cornell University, USA
,
Adriana Tapus
ENSTA-ParisTech, France

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGAI: ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence
SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction
IEEE-RAS: Robotics and Automation

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 26 February 2018

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HRI '18

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HRI '18: ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction

March 5 - 8, 2018

IL, Chicago, USA

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HRI '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 49 of 206 submissions, 24%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 268 of 1,124 submissions, 24%

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Cited By

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3721488.3721649
Rezzani AMenéndez-Blanco MBushman BDe Angeli A(2025)What is robot abuse? A sociotechnical definitionBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2025.2462268(1-19)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2025.2462268
Nishiwaki KBrščić DKanda T(2024)Expressing Anger with Robot for Tackling the Onset of Robot AbuseACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/369646714:1(1-23)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3696467
Genç UVerma H(2024)Situating Empathy in HCI/CSCW: A Scoping ReviewProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36870528:CSCW2(1-37)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
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Gillet SVázquez MAndrist SLeite ISebo S(2024)Interaction-Shaping Robotics: Robots that Influence Interactions between Other AgentsACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/3643803Online publication date: 2-Feb-2024
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Ladak AHarris JAnthis J(2024)Which Artificial Intelligences Do People Care About Most? A Conjoint Experiment on Moral ConsiderationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642403(1-11)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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Luo YLiu SWu DWang HPan Y(2024)"Please Be Nice": Robot Responses to User Bullying - Measuring Performance Across Aggression LevelsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642290(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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Song HRosenthal-Von Der Pütten AGrollman DBroadbent EJu WSoh HWilliams T(2024)Can you let me go? Exploring Delivery Robots' Verbal Response to Physical Bullying and its Impact on Perceived Safety, Comfort, Acceptability, and Existence Acceptance by Co-Present IndividualsCompanion of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/3610978.3640582(994-998)Online publication date: 11-Mar-2024
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