Abstract
Can trust be meaningfully attributed to technology? If so, under which conditions? By first presenting a conceptual analysis of trust, which differentiates between reliability and affective trust, we explore these intentionally broad questions through the analysis of the specific case of trusting social robots equipped with artificial emotional intelligence. Given their emotional capacities, which arguably strengthen the potential for deception, AEI social robots are considered the most likely candidates for experiencing trust-like attitudes towards technology. Determining whether, and what kind of, trust applies to relationships between humans and such robots will, we argue, be useful for determining what sort of trust can meaningfully be applied to human-technology interactions more broadly. This novel approach to the issue of trust in technology is underexplored in human-technology interaction, and the results presented will enable designers, citizens, and politicians to make better informed decisions regarding AEI social robots’ development.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Trustworthiness and trust are two interconnected however categorically distinct concepts (Nickel, Franssen & Kroes, 2010). Hardin (2006) argues that there is a casual connection between the two, as “trustworthiness begets trust”. Whereas trust is usually considered an attitude, trustworthiness is a property of the trustee which satisfies and makes appropriate the attitude of trusting (Nickel, Franssen & Kroes, 2010).
- 2.
It is important to mention that the social robotics’ features here presented raise ethical concerns beyond the topic of trust. Authors such as Turkle (2006, 2011) and Scheutz (2012) have expressed their concern about the anthropomorphisation of robotic technology, their deceptive potential, as well as the kind of relationship and unilateral emotional attachment that people would develop with them. However, these moral issues are not the focus of this article, and they will not therefore be addressed unless related to the issue of trust.
- 3.
Interestingly, Tallant’s thought experiment (2019) presents cases where humans are propense to anthropomorphise objects which do not appear to show any kind of agency.
References
Airenti, G.: The cognitive bases of anthropomorphism: from relatedness to empathy. Int. J. Soc. Robot. 7, 117–127 (2015)
Aroyo, A.M., et al.: Overtrusting robots: Setting a research agenda to mitigate overtrust in automation. Paladyn, J. Behav. Robot. 12(1), 423–436 (2021)
Beer, J.M., Liles, K.R., Wu, X., Pakala, S.: Affective human-robot interaction. In: Jeon, M. (ed.) Emotion and Affect in Human Factors and Human-Computer Interaction, pp. 359–381. Academic Press, London (2017)
Billings, D.R., Schaefer, K.E., Chen, J.Y., Hancock, P.A.: Human-robot interaction, developing trust in robots. In: Proceedings of the 7th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, pp. 109–110. ACM, Boston (2012)
Boada, J.P., Maestre, B.R., Genís, C.T.: The ethical issues of social assistive robotics: a critical literature review. Technology in Society 67 (2021)
Bok, S.: Lying: Moral Choices in Public and Private Life. Pantheon, New York, NY (1978)
Boles, T.L., Croson, R.T., Murnighan, J.K.: Deception and retribution in repeated ultimatum bargaining. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 83(2), 235–259 (2000)
Borenstein, J., Wagner, A.R., Howard, A.: Overtrust in pediatric health-care robots: a preliminary survey of parent perspectives. In: IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 25, pp. 46–54 (2018)
Breazeal, C.: Toward sociable robots. Robot. Auton. Syst. 42(3), 167–175 (2003)
Breazeal, C.: Designing sociable robots. The MIT Press. Cambridge, MA (2004)
Broadbent, E.: Interactions with robots: the truths we reveal about ourselves. Ann. Rev. Psychol. 8\68, 627–652 (2017)
Campa, R.: The rise of social robots: a review of the recent literature. J. Evol. Technol. 26(1), 106–113 (2016)
Carpenter, J.: Culture and human-robot interaction in militarized spaces: a war story. Ashgate, New York (2016)
Coeckelbergh, M.: Virtual moral agency, virtual moral responsibility: on the moral significant of the appearance, perception, and performance of artificial agents. AI & Soc. 24, 181–189 (2009)
Coeckelbergh, M.: Robot rights? Towards a social-relational justification of moral consideration. Ethics Inf. Technol. 12(3), 209–221 (2010)
Coeckelbergh, M.: Can we trust robots? Ethics Inf. Technol. 14, 53–60 (2012)
Coeckelbergh, M.: How to descrive and evaluate “deception” phenomena: recasting the metaphysics, ethics, and politics of ICTs in terms of magic and performance and taking a relational and narrative turn. Ethics Inf. Technol. 20, 71–85 (2018)
Coleman, J.S.: Foundations of social theory. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA (1990)
Damasio, A.: Descartes’ error: emotion, reason, and the human brain. Avon Books, New York (1994)
Damiano, L., Dumouchel, P.: Anthropomorphism in human-robot co-evolution. Front. Psychol. 9 (2018)
Danaher, J.: Robot betrayal: a guide to the ethics of robotic deception. Ethics Inf. Technol. 22(2), 117–128 (2020a)
Danaher, J.: Welcoming robots into the moral circle: a defence of ethical behaviourism. Sci. Eng. Ethics 26(4), 2023–2049 (2020b)
Danaher, J., Sætra, H.S.: Technology and moral change: the transformation of truth and trust. Ethics Inf. Technol. 24(3), 1–16 (2022)
Darling, K.: Extending legal protection to social robots: the effects of anthropomophism, empathy, and violent behavior toward robotic objects. In: Calo, R., Froomkin, A. M., Kerr, I. (eds.) Robot Law, pp. 213–231. Edward Elgar (2012)
Darling, K.: Who’s Johnny? Anthropomorphic framing in human-robot interaction, integration, and policy’. In: Lin, P., Bekey, G., Abney, K., Jenkins, R. (eds.) Robot Ethics 2.0. Oxford University Press (2017)
De Visser, E.J., et al.: Almost human: anthropomorphism increases trust resilience in cognitive agents. J. Exp. Psychol. Appl. 22(3), 331–349 (2016)
Dumouchel, P., Damiano, L.: Living with robots. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA (2017)
Epley, N., Waytz, A., Cacioppo, J.T.: On seeing human: a three-factor theory of anthropomorphism. Psychol. Rev. 114(4), 864–886 (2007)
Ferrin, D.L., Kim, P.H., Cooper, C.D., Dirks, K.T.: Silence speaks volumes: the effectiveness of reticence in comparison to apology and denial for responding to integrity-and competence-based trust violations. J. Appl. Psychol. 92(4), 893–908 (2007)
Fong, T., Nourbakhsh, I., Dautenhahn, K.: A survey of socially interactive robots. Robot. Auton. Syst. 42, 143–166 (2003)
Freedy, A., de Visser, E., Weltman, G., Coeyman, N.: Measurement of trust in human-robot collaboration. In: Proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on Collaborative Technologies and Systems, pp. 106–114. IEEE, Orlando, FL (2007)
Friedman, B., Kahn, P.H., Jr., Howe, D.C.: Structural equation modelling and regression: guidelines for research practice. Commun. AIS 7(7), 1–78 (2000)
Gaudiello, I., Lefort, S., Zibetti, E.: The ontological and functional status of robots. Comput. Hum. Behav. 50, 259–273 (2015)
Gino, F., Shea, C.: Deception in negotiations: the role of emotions. Handbook of conflict resolution. Oxford University Press, New York (2012)
Glikson, E., Woolley, A.W.: Human trust in artificial intelligence: review of empirical research. Acad. Manag. Ann. 14(2), 627–660 (2020)
Goleman, D.: Emotional intelligence. Bantam, New York (1995)
Gompei, T., Umemuro, H.: Factors and development of cognitive and affective trust on social robots. In: Ge, S.S., Cabibihan, J.-J., Salichs, M.A., Broadbent, E., He, H., Wagner, A.R., Castro-González, Á. (eds.) ICSR 2018. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 11357, pp. 45–54. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05204-1_5
Gunkel, D.J.: Robot Rights. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2018)
Hancock, P. A., Chen, J. Y. C., Schefer, K. E., de Visser, E.: A meta-analysis of factors affectivg trust in human-robot interaction. J. Hum. Fact. Ergon. Soc. 53 (2011)
Hardin, R.: Trust. Polity Press. Cambridge, UK (2006)
Healy, P.: Social robots as partners?. AI & Society (2022)
Heenrik, M., Krose, B., Evers, V., Wielinga, B.: Assessing acceptance of assistive social agent technology by older adults: the Almere model. Int. J. Soc. Robot. 2, 361–375 (2010)
Heuer, T., Schiering, I., Gerndt, R.: Privacy and socially assistive robots - a meta study. In: IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, pp. 265–281 (2018)
Hoff, K.A., Bashir, M.: Trust in automation: Integrating empirical evidence on factors that influence trust. Hum. Factors 57(3), 407–434 (2015)
Hung, K., et al.: The benefits of and barriers to using asocial robot PARO in care settings: a scoping review. BMC Geriatrics 19 (2019)
Isaac, A.M.C., Bridewell, W.: White lies on silver tongues: why robots need to deceive (and how). In. Lin, P. Abney, K., Jenkins, R. (eds) Robot Ethics 2.0: From Autonomous Cars to Artificial Intelligence. Oxford University Press, New York, NY (2017)
Kahn, P.H., Friedman, B. Jr., Hagman, J.: ‘I care about him as a pal’: a conception of robotic pets in online AIBO discussion forums. In: Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM Press, New York, NY (2002)
Kidd, C.D., Breazeal. C.: Robots at home: understanding long-term human-robot interaction. In: 2008 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 3230–3235. Nice, France (2008)
Kim, P.H., Ferrin, D.L., Cooper, C.D., Dirks, K.T.: Removing the shadow of suspicion: the effects of apology versus denial for repairing competence- versus integrity-based trust violations. J. Appl. Psychol. 89(1), 104–118 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.89.1.104
Kim, P.H., Dirks, K.T., Cooper, C.D., Ferrin, D.L.: When more blame is better than less: the implications of internal vs. external attributions for the repair of trust after a competence- vs. integrity-based trust violation. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Processes 99(1), 49–65 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2005.07.002
Koyama, T.: Ethical issues for social robots and the trust-based approach. In: IEEE International Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts (ARSO) (2016)
Romportl, J., Zackova, E., Kelemen, J. (eds.): Beyond Artificial Intelligence. TIEI, vol. 9. Springer, Cham (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09668-1
Lankton, N.K., McKnight, D.H., Tripp, J.: Technology, humanness, and trust: rethinking trust in technology. J. Assoc. Inf. Syst. 16(10) (2015)
Lee, J.D., See, K.A.: Trust in automation: designing for appropriate reliance. Hum. Fact.: J. Hum. Fact. Ergon. Soc. 46(1), 50–80 (2004)
Lee, M. K., Tang, K. P., Forlizzi, J., Kiesler, S.: Understanding users’ perception of privacy in human-robot interaction. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, HRI ’11. Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 181–182. New York, NY, USA (2011)
Lerner, J.S., Li, Y., Valdesolo, P., Kassam, K.S.: Emotion and decision making. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 66, 799–823 (2015)
Levine, E.E., Schweitzer, M.E.: Are liars ethical? On the tension between benevolence and honesty. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 53, 107–117 (2014)
Levine, E.E., Schweitzer, M.E.: Prosocial lies: When deception breeds trust. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 126, 88–106 (2015)
Lewicky, E.J., Bunker, B.B.: Trust in relationships: a model of development and decline. In: Bunker, B. B., Rubin, J. Z. (eds.) Conflict, cooperation, and justice: essays inspired by the work of Morton Deutsch, pp. 133–173. Jossey-Bass/Wiley (1995)
LOVOT. https://lovot.life/en/ (2023)
Lum, H.C.: The role of consumer robots in our everyday lives. In: Pak, R., de Visser, E.J., Rovira, E. (eds.) Living with robots, pp. 141–152. Academic Press, Cambridge, MA (2020)
Lynch, C.R.: Artificial emotional intelligence and the intimate politics of robotic sociality. Space Polity 25(2), 184–201 (2021)
Lutz, C., Schöttler, M., Hoffmann, C.P.: The privacy implications of social robots: scoping review and expert interviews. Mobile Media & Commun. 7(3), 412–434 (2019)
Mann, J.A., MacDonald, B.A., Kuo, I., Li, X., Broadbent, E.: People respond better to robots than computers tablets delivering healthcare instructions. Comput. Hum. Behav. 43, 112–117 (2015)
Matthias, A.: Robot lies in health care: when is deception morally permissible? Kenney Instit. Ethics J. 25(2), 169-162 (2015)
Mayer, R.C., Davis, J.H., Schoorman, F.D.: An integrative model of organizational trust. Acad. Manag. Rev. 20(3), 709–734 (1995)
McAllister, D.J.: Affect-and cognition-based trust as foundations for interpersonal cooperation in organizations. Acad. Manag. J. 38(1), 24–59 (1995)
McKnight, H., Carter, M., Clay, P.: Trust in technology: Development of a set of constructs and measures. In: Digit 2009 Proceedings 10 (2009)
Mohammed, S.M.: Ethics sheet for automatic emotion recognition and sentiment analysis. Comput. Linguistic 48(2), 239–278 (2022)
Mosier, K.L., Dunbar, M., McDonnell, L., Skitka, L.J., Burdick, M., Rosenblatt, B.: Automation bias and errors: are teams better than individuals?. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, vol. 42, pp. 201–205 (1998)
Reeves, B., Nass, C.I.: The media equation: how people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY (1996)
Nickel, P.J., Franssen, M., Kroes, P.: Can we make sense of the notion of trustworthy technology? Knowl. Technol. Policy 23, 429–444 (2010)
Nyholm, S.: Humans and robots: ethics, agency, and anthropomorphism. Rowman and Littlefield (2020)
Picard, R.W.: Affective computing. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (1997)
Plaks, J.E., Rodrigues, L.B., Ayad, R.: Identifying psychological features of robots that encourage and discourage trust. Comput. Hum. Behav. 134 (2022)
Prescott, T.J., Robillard, J.M.: Are friends electric? The benefits and risks of human-robot relationships. iScience 24(1) (2020)
Richards, N.M., Smart, W.D.: How should the law think about robots? In: Calo, R., Froomkin, M., Kerr, I. (eds.) Robot Law, pp. 3–24. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK (2016)
Riek, L., Rabinowitch, T., Cjakrabart, B., Robinson, P.: How anthropomorphism affects empathy toward robots. In: Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction. Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 245–146. New York, NY, USA (2009)
Robinette, P., Howard, A.M., Wagner, A.R.: Effect of robot performance on human-robot trust in time-critical situations. IEEE Trans. Hum.-Mach. Syst. 47(4), 425–436 (2017)
Rossi, A., Koay, K.L., Dautenhahn, L., and Walters, M. L: How social robots influence people’s trust in critical situation. In: 2020 29th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) (2020)
Rousseau, D.M., Sitkin, S.B., Burt, R.S., Camerer, C.: Not so different after all: a cross-discipline view of trust. Acad. Manag. Rev. 23(3), 393–404 (1998)
Sætra, H.S.: The parasitic nature of social AI: sharing minds with the mindless. Integr. Psychol. Behav. Sci. 54, 308–326 (2020)
Sætra, H.S.: Social robot deception and the culture of trust. Paladyn, J. Behav. Robot. 12(1), 276–286 (2021a)
Sætra, H.S.: Confounding complexity of machine action: a Hobbesian account of machine responsibility. Int. J. Technoethics (IJT) 12(1), 87–100 (2021b)
Sebastian, W., Feiten, L.: Trust in technology: interlocking trust concepts for privacy respecting video surveillance. J. Inf. Commun. Ethics Soc. 19(4), 506–520 (2021)
Severson, R.L., Carlson, S.M.: Behaving as or behaving as if? Children’s conceptions of personified robots and the emergence of a new ontological category. Neural Network 23, 1099–1103
Scheutz, M.: The inherent dangers of unidirectional emotional bonds between humans and social robots. In: Lin, P., Abney, K., Bekey, G.A. (eds.) Robo-Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics, pp. 205–221. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2012)
Schoorman, F.D., Mayer, R.C., Davis, J.H.: An integrative model of organizational trust: past, present, and future. Acad. Manag. Rev. 32(2), 344–354 (2007)
Schuller, D., Schuller, B.W.: The age of artificial emotional intelligence. Computer 51(9), 38–46 (2018)
Schweitzer, M.E., Croson, R.: Curtailing deception: the impact of direct questions on lies and omissions. Int. J. Confl. Manag. 10(2), 225–248 (1999)
Schweitzer, M.E., Hershey, J.C., Bradlow, E.T.: Promises and lies: restoring violated trust. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 101(1), 1–19 (2006)
Sharkey, A.J.C.: Should we welcome robot teachers? Ethics Inf. Technol. 18(4), 283–297 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-016-9387-z
Sharkey, A., Sharkey, N.: Granny and the robots: ethical issues in robot care for the elderly. Ethics Inf. Technol. 14, 17–40 (2012)
Sharkey, A., Sharkey, N.: We need to talk about deception in social robotics! Ethics Inf. Technol. 23(3), 309–316 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-020-09573-9
Shim, J., Arkin, R.C.: A taxonomy of robot deception and its benefits in HEI. In: 2013 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (2013)
Song, Y., Luximon, Y.: Trust in AI agent: a systematic review of facial anthropomorphic trustworthiness for social robot design. Sensors 20(18) (2020)
Sullins, J.P.: Robots, love, and sex: the ethics of building a love machine. IEEE Trans. Affect. Comput. 3(4), 398–409 (2012)
Sung, J.Y., Guo, L., Grinter, R.E., Christensen, H.I.: “My Roomba is rambo”: intimate home appliances. In: Krumm, J., Abowd, G.D., Seneviratne, A., Strang, T. (eds.) UbiComp 2007: Ubiquitous Computing. LNCS, vol. 4717, pp. 145–162. Springer, Berlin (2007)
Sweeney, P.: A functional dualism model of social robots. Ethics Inf. Technol. 23, 465–472 (2021)
Sweeney, P.: Trusting social robots. AI and Ethics (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-022-00165-5
Tallant, J.: You can trust the ladder, but you shouldn’t. Theoria 85(2), 102–118 (2019)
Torta, E., et al.: Evaluation of a small socially-assistive humanoid robot in intelligent homes for the care of the elderly. J. Intell. Rob. Syst. 76(1), 57–71 (2014)
Turkle, S.: A nascent robotics culture: new complicities for companionship. In: AAAI Technical Report Series (2006)
Turkle, S.: In good company? On the threshold of robotic companions. In: Wilks, Y. (ed.) Close engagements with artificial companions: Key social, psychological, ethical and design issues, pp. 3–10. John Benjamins Publishing, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2010)
Turkle, S.: Alone Together. Basic Books, New York (2011)
Van Maris, A., Zook, N., Caleb-Solly, P., Studley, M., Winfield, A., Dogramadzi, S.: Designing ethical social robots - A longitudinal field study with older adults. Front. Robot. AI 7(1) (2020)
Wagner, A.R.: The role of trust and relationships in human-robot social interaction. Georgia Institute of Technology (2009)
Wagner, A.R., Borenstein, J., Howard, A.: Overtrust in the robotic age. Commun. ACM 61(9), 22–24 (2018)
Złotowski, J., Sumioka, H., Nishio, S., Glas, D.F., Bartneck, C., Ishiguro, H.: Appearance of a robot affects the impact of its behaviour on perceived trustworthiness and empathy. Paladyn, J. Behav. Robot. 7(1) (2016)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sica, A., Sætra, H.S. (2023). In Technology We Trust! But Should We?. In: Kurosu, M., Hashizume, A. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction. HCII 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14012. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35599-8_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35599-8_19
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-35598-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-35599-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)