People Do Not Always Know Best: Preschoolers' Trust in Social Robots

• Published in: Journal of cognition and development Vol. 24; no. 4; pp. 535 - 562
• Main Authors: Baumann, Anna-Elisabeth, Goldman, Elizabeth J., Meltzer, Alexandra, Poulin-Dubois, Diane
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia Routledge 08.08.2023; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Children; Competence; Foreign Countries; Interpersonal Competence; Preschool Children; Prosocial Behavior; Robotics; Robots; Social Behavior; Trust (Psychology); Canada
• ISSN: 1524-8372; 1532-7647
• DOI: 10.1080/15248372.2023.2178435

In this paper, we investigated whether Canadian preschoolers prefer to learn from a competent robot over an incompetent human using the classic trust paradigm. An adapted Naive Biology task was also administered to assess children's perception of robots. In Study 1, 3-year-olds and 5-year-olds were presented with two informants; A social, humanoid robot (Nao) who labeled familiar objects correctly, while a human informant labeled them incorrectly. Both informants then labeled unfamiliar objects with novel labels. It was found that 3-year-old children equally endorsed the labels provided by the robot and the human, but 5-year-old children learned significantly more from the competent robot. Interestingly, 5-year-olds endorsed Nao's labels even though they accurately categorized the robot as having mechanical insides. In contrast, 3-year-old children associated Nao with biological or mechanical insides equally. In Study 2, new samples of 3-year-olds and 5-year-olds were tested to determine whether the human-like appearance of the robot informant impacted children's trust judgments. The procedure was identical to that of Study 1, except that a non-humanoid robot, Cozmo, replaced Nao. It was found that 3-year-old children still trusted the robot and the human equally and that 5-year-olds preferred to learn new labels from the robot, suggesting that the robot's morphology does not play a key role in their selective trust strategies. It is concluded that by 5 years of age, preschoolers show a robust sensitivity to epistemic characteristics (e.g., competency), but that younger children's decisions are equally driven by the animacy of the informant.