A recently published journal article of the Center for HCI, published with Frontiers in Robotics and AI, is currently making the global headlines!

In the article we report on a study on social robots where we found that people liked a robot that makes errors considerably more than a robot that operated free from error. At first this finding sounds surprising, but when we think about it from a social perspective it makes sense. Perfect individuals only remind us about our own shortcomings, which makes them seem more distant an less likeable. This phenomenon is called Pratfall Effect and it dates back to the 1960s. With our results we could successfully demonstrate that this social psychological phenomenon known from interpersonal interaction can be transferred to human-robot interaction likewise.

Some of the media coverage included Medical Research, Digital Trends, IFL Science, and The Verge.

Nicole Mirnig also talked about our recent research on the drive time show at ABC Radio Melbourne. You can listen to the clip here:

Access the full open access article here.