Do robot appearance and speech affect people´s attitude? Evaluation through the Ultimatum Game

In this study, we examine the factors with which robots are recognized as social beings. Participants joined sessions of the Ultimatum Game, a procedure commonly used for examining attitudes toward others in the fields of economics and social psychology. Several agents differing in their appearances are tested with speech stimuli that are expected to induce a mentalizing effect toward the agents. As a result, we found that while appearance itself did not show significant difference in the attitudes, the mentalizing stimuli affected the attitudes in different ways depending on robots´ appearances. This results showed that such elements as simple conversation with the agents and their appearance are important factors so that robots are treated more humanlike and as social beings.