College News

Back to College News

Study: Manipulating Social Robots’ Facial and Kinetic Cues Can Have an Effect on Users’ Social Presence and Trust

A new study has found that manipulating social robots’ facial and kinetic cues can induce medium-to-large-sized effects on users’ social presence and trust. The findings by Kun Xu, University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications (UFCJC) Media Production, Management, and Technology assistant professor in emerging media, UFCJC doctoral student Mo Chen and Leping You, Ph.D. 2020, are featured in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to a Credible and Socially Present Robot: Two Meta-Analyses of the Power of Social Cues in Human-Robot Interaction” published in the International Journal of Social Robotics (2023) on Jan. 18.

This study sought to understand the overall effects of social cues and applies two meta-analyses to explore a hierarchy of social cues that elicits different degrees of users’ social responses.

According to the authors, “Results suggested that although the overall effects of social cues were small, manipulating social robots’ facial and kinetic cues can induce medium-to-large-sized effects on users’ social presence and trust. In addition, the overall positive effect sizes of social cues indicated that designing humanlike, natural, and lifelike cues was effective in evoking users’ social presence and trust in social robots.”

They add, “Researchers could explore whether there exists a hierarchy that ranks the effects of the perceived personalities, identities, operation flexibilities, gender stereotypes, and other social signals. Such knowledge may further help researchers to explore the best strategies to design social robots that are efficient in communication and acceptable in our daily lives.”

Posted: February 2, 2023
Category: AI at CJC News, College News
Tagged as: , , , ,