A Study on Social Exclusion in Human-Robot Interaction

Recent research in human-robot interaction (HRI) points to possible unfair outcomes caused by artificial systems based on machine learning. The aim of this study was to investigate if people are susceptible to social exclusion shown by a robot and, if they are, how they signal the feeling of being rejected from the group. We review the research on social exclusion in the context of human–human interaction and explore its relevance for HRI. Then we present the results of our experiment to simulate social exclusion in the context of HRI: the participants (for whom it was their first encounter with a robot) and the Nao robot were asked to cooperate in solving the bomb defusal task, during which the robot favored one participant with whom it had a longer interaction before the task. The robot was controlled using the Wizard-of-Oz methodology throughout the experiment. Our results show that the discriminated participants reported a higher feeling of exclusion. Though some other hypotheses were not confirmed, we present several qualitative observations from our experiment. For example, it was noticed that the participants who behaved more openly and were more extraverted acted more comfortably when interacting with the robot.