Researchers Use Robot
to Determine How
Human Strangers
Develop Trust:
A lot, according to Northeastern psychology
professor David DeSteno, and his colleagues,
who are conducting innovative research to
determine how humans decide to trust strangers
-- and if those decisions are accurate.
The interdisciplinary research project, funded by
the National Science Foundation (NSF), is being
conducted in collaboration with Cynthia Breazeal,
director of the MIT Media Lab's Personal Robots
Group, Robert Frank, an economist, and David
Pizarro, a psychologist, both from Cornell.
The researchers are examining whether
nonverbal cues and gestures could affect our
trustworthiness judgments. "People tend to
mimic each other's body language," said
DeSteno, "which might help them develop
intuitions about what other people are feeling --
intuitions about whether they'll treat them fairly."
This project tests their theories by having
humans interact with the social robot, Nexi, in an
attempt to judge her trustworthiness.
Unbeknownst to participants, Nexi has been
programmed to make gestures while speaking
with selected participants -- gestures that the
team hypothesizes could determine whether or
not she's deemed trustworthy.
"Using a humanoid robot whose every
expression and gesture we can control will allow
us to better identify the exact cues and
psychological processes that underlie humans'
ability to accurately predict if a stranger is
trustworthy," said DeSteno.
During the first part of the experiment, Nexi
makes small talk with her human counterpart for
10 minutes, asking and answering questions
about topics such as traveling, where they are
from and what they like most about living in
Boston.
"The goal was to simulate a normal conversation
with accompanying movements to see what the
mind would intuitively glean about the
trustworthiness of another," said DeSteno.
The participants then play an economic game
called "Give Some," which asks them to
determine how much money Nexi might give
them at the expense of her individual profit.
Simultaneously, they decide how much, if any,
they'll give to Nexi. The rules of the game allow
for two distinct outcomes: higher individual profit
for one and loss for the other, or relatively
smaller and equal profits for both partners.
"Trust might not be determined by one isolated
gesture, but rather a 'dance' that happens
between the strangers, which leads them to trust
or not trust the other," said DeSteno, who, with
his colleagues, will continue testing their theories
by seeing if Nexi can be taught to predict the
trustworthiness of human partners.
Thanks to science daily
