The Influence of Robot Personality on the Development of Uncanny Feelings

Empirical investigations on the uncanny valley have almost solely focused on the analysis of people's non-interactive perception of a robot at first sight. Recent studies suggest, however, that these uncanny first impressions may be significantly altered over an interaction. What is yet to discover, however, is whether certain interaction patterns can lead to a faster decline in uncanny feelings. In this paper, we present a study in which participants with limited expertise in Computer Science played a collaborative geography game with the robot Furhat. During the game, Furhat displayed two personalities, which corresponded to two different interaction strategies. The robot was either optimistic and encouraging, or impatient and provocative. We performed the study in a science museum and recruited participants among the visitors. Our findings suggest that a robot that is rated high on agreeableness, emotional stability, and conscientiousness can indeed weaken uncanny feelings. This study has important implications for human-robot interaction design as it further highlights that a first impression, merely based on a robot's appearance, is not indicative of the affinity people might develop towards it throughout an interaction. Future work should thus emphasize investigations on finding exact interaction patterns that can help to overcome uncanny feelings.