Have you ever lied?: The impacts of gaze avoidance on people´s perception of a robot

In human-human interaction, gaze avoidance is usually interpreted as having intention to escape from an embarrassing situation. This study explores whether gaze avoidance by a robot can be delivered as an intention, and whether this intention can make a robot perceived as having sociability and intelligence. We executed a 2 (question type: normal vs. embarrassing) × 2 (gaze type: gaze vs. gaze avoidance) within-participants experiment (N=24). In an embarrassing situation, a robot with gaze avoidance is perceived as more sociable and intelligent than a robot that holds its gaze, while the robot that holds its gaze in a normal situation is perceived as more sociable and intelligent than a robot with gaze avoidance. Implications for the design of human-robot interactions are discussed.