Human-Robot Interactions: Insights from Experimental and Evolutionary Social Sciences

Experimental research in the realm of human-robot interactions has focused on the behavioral and psychological influences affecting human interaction and cooperation with robots. A robot is loosely defined as a device designed to perform agentic tasks autonomously or under remote control, often replicating or assisting human actions. Robots can vary widely in form, ranging from simple assembly line machines performing repetitive actions to advanced systems with no moving parts but with artificial intelligence (AI) capable of learning, problem-solving, communicating, and adapting to diverse environments and human interactions. Applications of experimental human-robot interaction research include the design, development, and implementation of robotic technologies that better align with human preferences, behaviors, and societal needs. As such, a central goal of experimental research on human-robot interactions is to better understand how trust is developed and maintained. A number of studies suggest that humans trust and act toward robots as they do towards humans, applying social norms and inferring agentic intent (Rai and Diermeier, 2015). While many robots are harmless and even helpful, some robots may reduce their human partner’s wages, security, or welfare and should not be trusted (Taddeo, McCutcheon and Floridi, 2019; Acemoglu and Restrepo, 2020; Alekseev, 2020). For example, more than half of all internet traffic is generated by bots, the majority of which are \u27bad bots\u27 (Imperva, 2016). Despite the hazards, robotic technologies are already transforming our everyday lives and finding their way into important domains such as healthcare, transportation, manufacturing, customer service, education, and disaster relief (Meyerson et al., 2023)

Conflicted Minds: Recalibrational Emotions Following Trust-based Interaction.

Consistent with a modular view of the mind, both short-sighted and long-sighted programs may be simultaneously active in the mind and in conflict with one another when individuals face choice dilemmas in trust-based economic interactions. Recalibrational theory helps us identify the adaptive design features shared among subsets of superordinate emotion programs. According to this design logic and the computation of adaptive problem features produced by Trust games, we predict the activation of emotions after Trust games. While this study successfully predicts reports of twenty distinct emotional states, further studies are needed to demonstrate ultimate recalibrational functions of emotions.emotions, recalibrational theory, modularity, Trust game, experiments

Restoring Damaged Trust with Promises, Atonement and Apology.

In an experiment using two consecutive trust games, we study how “cheap” signals such as promises and messages are used to restore damaged trust and encourage new trust where it did not previously exist. In these games, trustees made non-binding promises of investment-contingent returns, then investors decided whether to invest, and finally trustees decided how much to return. After an unexpected second game was announced, but before it commenced, trustees could send a one-way message. This naturalistic quasi-experimental design allowed us to observe the endogenous emergence of trust-relevant behaviors and focus on naturally occurring remedial strategies used by promise-breakers and distrusted trustees, their effects on investors, and subsequent outcomes. In the first game 16.6% of trustees were distrusted and 18.8% of trusted trustees broke promises. Trustees distrusted in the first game used promises closer to equal splits and messaging to encourage trust in the second game. To restore damaged trust, promise-breakers used larger new promises (signals of intended atonement) and messaging (usually with apology). On average, investments in each game paid off for investors and trustees, suggesting that cheap signals foster profitable trust-based exchanges in these economic games.promise, atonement, apology, cheap talk, cheap signals, remedial strategies, trust game, reciprocity, experiments

Social Norms, Discrete Choices, and False Dichotomies

Eric Schniter and Nathaniel Wilcox comment on Bram Tucker\u27s article, Do Risk and Time Experimental Choices Represent Individual Strategies for Coping with Poverty or Conformity to Social Norms? Evidence from Rural Southwestern Madagascar , which revisits a debate played out in Current Anthropology as to whether subsistence decisions are the result of individual strategy to cope with poverty and increase wealth... or conformity to social norms

Predictive Mind Reading from First and Second Impressions: Better-than-chance Prediction of Cooperative Behavior

People’s appearance and behaviors in strategic interactions provide a variety of informative clues that can help people accurately predict beliefs, intentions, and future behaviors. Mind reading mechanisms may have been selected for that allow for better-than-chance prediction of others’ strategic social propensities based on the sparse information available when forming first and second impressions. We hypothesize that first impressions are based on prior beliefs and available information gleaned from another’s description and appearance. For example, where another’s gender is identified, prior gender stereotypes could influence expectations and correct guesses about them. We also hypothesize that mind reading mechanisms use second impressions to predict behavior: using new knowledge of past behaviors to predict future behavior. For example, knowledge of the last round behaviors in a repeated strategic interaction should improve the accuracy of guesses about the next round behavior. We conducted a two-part study to test our predictive mind reading hypotheses and to evaluate evidence of accurate cheater and cooperator detection. First, across multiple rounds of play between matched partners, we recorded thin slice videos of university students just prior to their choices in a repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma. Subsequently, a worldwide sample of raters recruited online evaluated either thin-slice videos, photo stills from the videos, no images with gender labeled, or no images with gender blinded for each target. Raters guessed players’ Prisoner’s Dilemma choices in the first round, and, again, in the second round after viewing first round behavior histories. Indicative of mindreading: in all treatments where targets are seen, or their gender is labeled, or their behavioral history is provided, raters guess unacquainted players’ behavior with above-chance accuracy. Overall, cooperators are more accurately detected than cheaters. In both rounds, both cooperator and cheater detection are significantly more accurate when players’ photo or video are seen, where their gender is revealed by image or label, and under conditions with behavioral history. These results provide supporting evidence for predictive mind reading abilities that people use to efficiently detect cooperators and cheaters with better-than-chance accuracy under sparse information conditions. This ability to apply and hone predictive mindreading may help explain why cooperation is commonly observed among strangers in everyday social dilemmas

Predictable and Predictive Emotions: Explaining Cheap Signals and Trust Re-Extension

Despite normative predictions from economics and biology, unrelated strangers can often develop the trust necessary to reap gains from one-shot economic exchange opportunities. This appears to be especially true when declared intentions and emotions can be cheaply communicated. Perhaps even more puzzling to economists and biologists is the observation that anonymous and unrelated individuals, known to have breached trust, often make effective use of cheap signals, such as promises and apologies, to encourage trust re-extension. We used a pair of trust games with one-way communication and emotion surveys to investigate the role of emotions in regulating the propensity to message, apologize, re-extend trust, and demonstrate trustworthiness. This design allowed us to observe the endogenous emergence and natural distribution of trust-relevant behaviors, remedial strategies used by promise-breakers, their effects on behavior, and subsequent outcomes. We found that emotions triggered by interaction outcomes are predictable and also predict subsequent apology and trust re-extension. The role of emotions in behavioral regulation helps explain why messages are produced, when they can be trusted, and when trust will be re-extended

Evolution of Primate Vocal Repertoires: Vocalization Systems as Embodied Capital for Mediating Within-group Conflict

Phylogenetic studies of communication help us understand evolutionary changes that led to human language – a form of primate communication, extraordinarily complex in terms of its varied vocalizations. Here we describe the macro-evolutionary role of life history traits on primate vocalization systems, informing our understanding of the relationships between social complexity and primate vocal repertoire size. We reviewed the primatological literature and collected information on the vocal repertoire size, social conflict, group size, endocranial volume, and maximum longevity of 42 non-human primate species. We conducted a set of analyses to examine the role of these factors on the macroevolution of vocal repertoire size over the course of primate evolution. Overall, the results strongly suggest that the embodied capital needed to support larger vocal repertoires has been selected for among anthropoid primates, especially hominoids. Large vocal repertoires help species cope with challenges of within-group conflict and cooperation that increase where larger groups have evolved with longer lifespans. While monkeys and apes developed substantially greater vocal complexity during the Late Miocene and the Early Pliocene, human language likely did not emerge until quite late in the primate evolutionary timeline, subsequent to the evolution of early hominins

Recalibrational Emotions and the Regulation of Trust-Based Behaviors

Though individuals differ in the degree to which they are predisposed to trust or act trustworthy, we theorize that trust-based behaviors are universally determined by the calibration of conflicting short- and long-sighted behavior regulation programs, and that these programs are calibrated by emotions experienced personally and interpersonally. In this chapter we review both the main-stream and evolutionary theories of emotions that philosophers, psychologists, and behavioral economists have based their work on and which can inform our understanding of trust-based behavior regulation. The standard paradigm for understanding emotions is based on mapping their positive and negative affect valence. While Valence Models often expect that the experience of positive and negative affect is interdependent (leading to the popular use of bipolar affect scales), a multivariate “recalibrational” model based on positive, negative, interpersonal, intrapersonal, short-sighted and long-sighted dimensions predicts and recognizes more complex mixed-valence emotional states. We summarize experimental evidence that supports a model of emotionally-calibrated trust regulation and discuss implications for the use of various emotion measures. Finally, in light of these discussions we suggest future directions for the investigation of emotions and trust psychology

Culture Sometimes Matters: Intra-cultural Variation in Pro-social Behavior Among Tsimane Amerindians

Agent-centered models usually consider only individual-level variables in calculations of economic costs and benefits. There has been little consideration of social or cultural history on shaping payoffs in ways that impact decisions. To examine the role of local expectations on economic behavior, we explore whether village affiliation accounts for the variation in dictator game offers among the Tsimane of the Bolivian Amazon independently of other factors that could confound such an effect. Our analysis shows that significant differences in altruistic giving exist among villages, village patterns are recognized by residents, and offers likely reflect variation in social expectations rather than stable differences in norms of fairness

Trust, Reciprocity and Rules

In the absence of enforceable contracts, many economic and personal interactions rely on trust and reciprocity. Research shows that although this reliance often works well, sometimes it breaks down. Simple rules mandating minimum standards on reciprocation prevent the most egregious trust violations, but may also undermine behavior that would have otherwise produced higher overall economic welfare. We test the efficacy of exogenously imposed minimum return rules using experimental trust games. We find that rules fail to increase trust and trustworthiness. Thus low minimum standards significantly decrease economic welfare. Although sufficiently restrictive rules restore welfare, trust and trustworthy behavior never returns.trust games, experiments, reputation, information, reciprocity