Exploring the Impacts of Human-Robot Gender Match on Users’ Perceptions of Robots

Abstract

Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.Numerous studies have explored human preferences for male versus female robots, producing inconsistent findings and varied explanations for the manifestation of gender bias towards robots. This study contributes to understanding how user gender and robot gender interact to influence users’ evaluations of robots by analyzing over 1100 survey responses on 23 robots, distinguished by their male and female appearances. The findings refute the existence of the same-gender or cross-gender effect. Specifically, we found a general preference for female robots over male robots. In addition, female users report the highest likeability scores for female robots compared to other human-robot gender combinations.Peer reviewe