"I Don't Believe You": Investigating the Effects of Robot Trust Violation and Repair

When a robot breaks a person's trust by making a mistake or failing, continued interaction will depend heavily on how the robot repairs the trust that was broken. Prior work in psychology has demonstrated that both the trust violation framing and the trust repair strategy influence how effectively trust can be restored. We investigate trust repair between a human and a robot in the context of a competitive game, where a robot tries to restore a human's trust after a broken promise, using either a competence or integrity trust violation framing and either an apology or denial trust repair strategy. Results from a 2x2 between-subjects study (n = 82) show that participants interacting with a robot employing the integrity trust violation framing and the denial trust repair strategy are significantly more likely to exhibit behavioral retaliation toward the robot. In the Dyadic Trust Scale survey, an interaction between trust violation framing and trust repair strategy was observed. Our results demonstrate the importance of considering both trust violation framing and trust repair strategy choice when designing robots to repair trust. We also discuss the influence of human-to-robot promises and ethical considerations when framing and repairing trust between a human and robot.