A Scent to Impress: The Smell of Lavender enhances Trust of Robots

Abstract

Robots are being employed to assist people such as in doctors’ offices or hospitals. The robots will be most effective if people trust them. We examine how one understudied environmental factor, scent, can affect trust of a robot. In a room that was unscented or positively scented (lavender), participants (N = 22) answered the robot Nao's questions about their sleep quality, then indicated their trust of the robot. Results show that participants in the lavender scented room trusted the robot more than those in the unscented room. The researchers intend to collect more data, but these preliminary results indicate that researchers should be cautious of the scents in their experiments. Researchers and practitioners should also examine how to harness scents to enhance trust and acceptance of assistive robots.