Previous research has shown that the perception that one’s partner is investing effort in a joint action can generate a sense of commitment, leading participants to persist longer despite increasing boredom. The current research extends this finding to human-robot interaction. We implemented a 2-player version of the classic snake game which became increasingly boring over the course of each round, and operationalized commitment in terms of how long participants persisted before pressing a ‘finish’ button to conclude each round. Participants were (...) informed that they would be linked via internet with their partner, a humanoid robot. Our results reveal that participants persisted longer when they perceived what they believed to be cues of their robot partner’s effortful contribution to the joint action. This provides evidence that the perception of a robot partner’s effort can elicit a sense of commitment to human-robot interaction. (shrink)

The paper spells out the rationale for developing means of manipulating and of measuring people’s sense of commitment to robot interaction partners. A sense of commitment may lead people to be patient when a robot is not working smoothly, to remain vigilant when a robot is working so smoothly that a task becomes boring, and to increase their willingness to invest effort in teaching a robot. We identify a range of contexts in which a sense of commitment to robot interaction (...) partners may be particularly important. (shrink)