Social Loafing with Robots – An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

Social loafing describes a phenomenon in human-human interaction of reduced effort when working in a team compared to working individually. With the increasing growth of human-robot teams, studying potential social loafing effects in human-robot interaction seems increasingly relevant. In a laboratory experiment, participants worked on two parallel tasks with a human or a robotic partner. The primary task was once completed coactively and once collectively with the respective partner and a shared task output. Performance measures revealed no effects regarding partner or working condition. However, subjective data revealed that participants invested the least effort when working collectively with the robot compared to working collectively with a human or in the coactive conditions. At the same time, the robot’s performance was perceived as worse compared to the human confederate’s performance. Based on the results we discuss that interacting with robots shares social facets of human teamwork but does not resemble it.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Asch

S. E.

(1951). Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments. Organizational influence processes, 295-303.

Brandstetter

Rácz

Beckner

Sandoval

E. B.

Hay

Bartneck

(2014). A peer pressure experiment: Recreation of the Asch conformity experiment with robots. In 2014 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (pp. 1335-1340). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2014.6942730

Burke

Coovert

Murphy

Riley

Rogers

(2006). Human-robot factors: Robots in the workplace. Proceedings of the human factors and ergonomics society annual meeting, 50(9), 870-874. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F154193120605000902

Cymek

D. H.

(2018). Redundant automation monitoring: Four eyes don't see more than two, if everyone turns a blind eye. Human factors, 60(7), 902-921. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018720818781192

Franke

Attig

Wessel

(2018). A personal resource for technology interaction: Development and validation of the affinity for technology interaction (ATI) scale. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 35(6), 456-467. https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2018.1456150

Hart

J. W.

Karau

S. J.

Stasson

M. F.

Kerr

N. A.

(2004). Achievement motivation, expected coworker performance, and collective task motivation: Working hard or hardly working? Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 34(5), 984-1000. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2004.tb02580.x

Karau

S. J.

Williams

K. D.

(1993). Social loafing: A meta-analytic review and theoretical integration. Journal of personality and social psychology, 65(4), 681-706. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.65.4.681

Lewis

Sycara

Walker

(2018). The role of trust in human-robot interaction. In Abbass

Scholz

Reid

(Eds.), Foundations of trusted autonomy (pp. 135-159). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64816-3

Manzey

Boehme

Schoebel

(2013). Human redundancy as safety measure in automation monitoring. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 57(1), 369-373). SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.1177/1541931213571080

10.

Nass

Fogg

B. J.

Moon

(1996). Can computers be teammates? International Journal of Human- Computer Studies, 45(6), 669-678. https://doi.org/10.1006/ijhc.1996.0073

11.

Nass

Moon

(2000). Machines and mindlessness: Social responses to computers. Journal of social issues, 56(1), 81-103. https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00153

12.

Panayotidis

Onnasch

(2019). Does Social Loafing exist in Human-Robot Interaction? https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/Z374G

13.

Riek

L. D.

Rabinowitch

T.-C.

Chakrabarti

Robinson

(2009). How anthropomorphism affects empathy toward robots. In Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (245–246). ACM.

14.

Riether

Hegel

Wrede

Horstmann

(2012). Social facilitation with social robots? 7th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp. 41-47). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1145/2157689.2157697

15.

Rutte

C. G.

(2003). Social loafing in teams. In West

M. A.

Tjosvold

Smith

K. G.

(Eds.), International handbook of organizational teamwork and cooperative working (pp. 361-378). John Wiley & Sons Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470696712.ch17

16.

Schmidtler

Knott

Hölzel

Bengler

(2015). Human centered assistance applications for the working environment of the future. Occupational Ergonomics, 12(3), 83-95. https://doi.org/10.3233/OER-150226

17.

Shiomi

Hagita

(2016). Do synchronized multiple robots exert peer pressure? In Proceedings of the fourth international conference on human agent interaction (pp. 27-33). https://doi.org/10.1145/2974804.2974808

18.

Williams

Harkins

S. G.

Latané

(1981). Identifiability as a deterrant to social loafing: Two cheering experiments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40(2), 303-311. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.40.2.303

19.

Williams

K. D.

Karau

S. J.

Bourgeois

M. J.

(1993). Working on collective tasks: Social loafing and social compensation. In Hogg

M. A.

Abrams

(Eds.), Group motivation: Social psychological perspectives (pp. 130–148). Harvester Wheatsheaf.