Abstract
Empirical evidence has shown that peer pressure can impact human risk-taking behavior. With robots becoming ever more present in a range of human settings, it is crucial to examine whether robots can have a similar impact. Using the balloon analogue risk task (BART) participants’ risk-taking behavior was measured either when alone, in the presence of a silent robot, or in the presence of a robot that actively encouraged risk-taking behavior. In the BART, shown to be a proxy for real risk-taking behavior, participants must weigh risk against potential payout. Our results reveal that participants who were encouraged by the robot did take more risks, while the mere presence of the robot in the robot control condition did not entice participants to show more risk-taking behavior. Our results point to both possible benefits and perils that robots might pose to human decision making. Although increasing risk-taking behavior in some cases has obvious advantages, it could also have detrimental consequences that are only now starting to emerge.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 337-342 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Cyberpsychology, behavior and social networking |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| Early online date | 18 Nov 2020 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 17 May 2021 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
This Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License [CC-BY] (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Keywords
- human–robot interaction
- peer pressure
- risk taking
- robot