The Effect of Interaction and Design Participation on Teenagers’ Attitudes towards Social Robots

Understanding people’s attitudes towards robots and how those attitudes are affected by exposure to robots is essential to the effective design and development of social robots. Although researchers have been studying attitudes towards robots among adults and even children for more than a decade, little has been explored assessing attitudes among teens–a highly vulnerable population that presents unique opportunities and challenges for social robots. Our work aims to close this gap. In this paper we present findings from several participatory robot interaction and design sessions with 136 teenagers who completed a modified version of the Negative Attitudes Towards Robots Scale (NARS) before participation in a robot interaction. Our data reveal that most teens are 1) highly optimistic about the helpfulness of robots, 2) do not feel nervous talking with a robot, but also 3) do not trust a robot with their data. Ninety teens also completed a post-interaction survey and reported a significant change in the motional attitudes subscale of the NARS. We discuss the implications of our findings on the design of social robots for teens.