The robot that adapts too much? An experimental study on users' perceptions of social robots’ behavioral and persona changes between interactions with different users

Similar to interactions between humans, social robots are able to adapt to different people by altering their behavior. However, in contrast to humans, robots' adaptations allow for more extensive configurations, for example switching their persona to the most fitting one for the next user. Because people normally do not experience such fast and comprehensive adaptations of their interaction partners, such persona adaptations might cause unintended problems in multi-user scenarios if they are witnessed by a robot's users. Referring to perspective-taking and self-monitoring theory this laboratory study experimentally tested the effects of interpersonal adaptations on users' evaluations of robots and their interaction duration by manipulating the degree of experienced adaptation (none, behavioral, persona) in a between-subjects design. Empirical data from N = 115 participants contradict the assumption that experienced persona adaptations of social robots do necessarily impair human-robot interactions. This is shown with regard to both, users' time spent on the interaction and the evaluation of the respective robot. Furthermore, no benefits of behavioral adaptations could be observed, that were expected to unfold since they should not conflict with users' perceived understanding of the robot. In sum, both kinds of robotic adaptations were perceived similarly to the non-adapting robot.