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Unethical Robot Teammates: The Effects of Wrongdoer Identity and Entity Type on Whistleblowing and Intergroup Dynamics

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Abstract

Group identity is important in moral judgments and decisions. People generally favor others who belong to their own group and are more reluctant to report their group members’ wrongdoings to authorities. The current research extends this idea to examine the impact of intergroup relationship on moral judgments in the context of human-robot interaction (HRI). Our results showed that although neither group identity (ingroup or outgroup) nor agent type (human or robot) of the wrongdoers influenced the likelihood to report the wrongdoings, attitudes towards the wrongdoer depended on their group identity. The wrongdoers were evaluated more negatively when they were an ingroup instead of an outgroup member, be it human or robot. Moreover, human wrongdoers were ascribed lesser mental capacities than other humans. The current work highlights the interplay of intergroup dynamics and HRI in the moral domain, providing practical implications for building more cooperative human-robot teams.

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Notes

  1. Although the numbers are too small to detect statistical significance, participants blocked or reported a non-wrongdoer robot (Ns = 7 and 9, respectively) more than they blocked or reported a non-wrongdoer human (Ns = 1 and 2, respectively). Participants more often blocked or reported the non-wrongdoer robot when a robot was the wrongdoer (N = 4 and 6, respectively) than when a human was at the wrongdoer (N = 3 and 3, respectively).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by NSF Grant # IIS-1849591. We thank Theresa Cosse, Berit Hanneken, David Knaus, Miriam Kutzera, and Nicolas Theiling, for their help with data collection. We also thank Friederike Eyssel for her help with participant compensation.

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This study was funded by NSF Grant (# IIS-1849591).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, New Mexico State University, 1780 E University Avenue, NM, NM 88003, Las Cruces, USA

    Rachel Hoi Yan Au & Marlena R. Fraune

  2. Center for Cognitive Interaction Technology, Bielefeld University, Universitätsstraße 25, 33615, Bielefeld, Germany

    Ricarda Wullenkord

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Correspondence to Rachel Hoi Yan Au.

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Au, R.H.Y., Fraune, M.R. & Wullenkord, R. Unethical Robot Teammates: The Effects of Wrongdoer Identity and Entity Type on Whistleblowing and Intergroup Dynamics. Int J of Soc Robotics 15, 1473–1486 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-023-01057-2

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