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Robot to cue your decision of trusting strangers
By siliconindia
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Monday, 12 July 2010, 22:38 IST
Bangalore: A social robot called Nexi is being used by researchers to find how human beings decide on trusting strangers and to what extent are those decisions accurate.
David DeSteno, Psychology Professor, Northeastern University is conducting the interdisciplinary research, 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 team is examining whether nonverbal cues and gestures could affect our judgment on trusting others.
DeSteno said, "People tend to mimic each other's body language which might help them develop intuitions about what other people are feeling - intuitions about whether they'll treat them fairly."
In the project, humans interact with the social robot, Nexi, and try to judge her trustworthiness. Nexi is programmed to make gestures while speaking to selected participants. The team hypothesizes that these gestures could determine whether or not she's deemed trustworthy.
DeSteno added using a humanoid robot, whose every expression and gesture can be controlled, will allow to better identify the exact cues and psychological processes that underlie humans' ability to accurately predict if a stranger is trustworthy.
During the course of the experiment, Nexi makes small talk with the human subject for ten minutes, asking questions on several topics. "The goal was to simulate a normal conversation with accompanying movements to see what the mind would intuitively glean about the trustworthiness of another," DeSteno said.