Effects of Assistive Robot Behavior on Impressions of Patient Psychological Attributes: Vignette-Based Human-Robot Interaction Study

Background: As robots are increasingly designed for health management applications, it is critical to not only consider the effects robots will have on patients but also consider a patient's wider social network, including the patient's caregivers and health care providers, among others. Objective: In this paper we investigated how people evaluate robots that provide care and how they form impressions of the patient the robot cares for, based on how the robot represents the patient. Methods: We have used a vignette-based study, showing participants hypothetical scenarios describing behaviors of assistive robots (patient-centered or task-centered) and measured their influence on people's evaluations of the robot itself (emotional intelligence [EI], trustworthiness, and acceptability) as well as people's perceptions of the patient for whom the robot provides care. Results: We found that for scenarios describing a robot that acts in a patient-centered manner, the robot will not only be perceived as having higher EI (P=.003) but will also cause people to form more positive impressions of the patient that the robot cares for (P<.001). We replicated and expanded these results to other domains such as dieting, learning, and job training. Conclusions: These results imply that robots could be used to enhance human-human relationships in the health care context and beyond.