Robot Humanization Measure/Task

In human-robot interaction, one key factor to predict and understand how human engage and interact with robots is how the inter-individual differences in how they perceive, consider and feel toward robots. Building on the theories of social categorization and dehumanization we aimed to develop a new tool assessing the perceived conceptual distance between humans and robots when observing robotic actions. In three studies we developed and validated the structure of a task aiming at evaluating to what extent individuals humanize robots. In this task participants were required to judge the human-likeness of robotic actions on a robot/human continuum represented by silhouettes. In a fourth study, we adapted this new tool to a decision task (with two response options robot/human) in which response time and response selection are used to infer the robot humanization bias of participants. Results showed reliable psychometric structure of the present measure in both questionnaire and decision task format. We further discuss how social categorization bias in HRI may be relevant to better predict attitudes toward robots.