Service robots and their categorization of humans: An examination of the effects of robots’ dehumanization of human users
(A2023-113262)

AUTHORS

Magnus Söderlund, Stockholm School of Economics

ABSTRACT

Service robots are expected to become increasingly common, and one fundamental task for them is to detect when a human user is present. Thus they need to be able to correctly categorize a user as a “user”. So far, however, little is known about how users react to robots’ understanding of what a user is in terms of a more fundamental social category, namely “human”. Given that we humans are sensitive to how we are categorized by others, it was assumed in the present study that this sensitivity exists also when the categorizer is a (humanlike) service robot, and this assumption was examined with a between-subjects experiment in which a service robot’s categorization of the user was manipulated (low vs. high dehumanization). The main finding was that high robotic dehumanization had a negative impact on the user’s overall evaluation of the robot.