Facets of Trust and Distrust in Collaborative Robots at the Workplace: Towards a Multidimensional and Relational Conceptualisation

The relevance of trust on the road to successful human-robot interaction is widely acknowledged. Thereby, trust is commonly understood as a monolithic concept characterising dyadic relations between a human and a robot. However, this conceptualisation seems oversimplified and neglects the specific interaction context. In a multidisciplinary approach, this conceptual analysis synthesizes sociological notions of trust and distrust, psychological trust models, and ideas of philosophers of technology in order to pave the way for a multidimensional, relational and context-sensitive conceptualisation of human-robot trust and distrust. In this vein, trust is characterised functionally as a mechanism to cope with environmental complexity when dealing with ambiguously perceived hybrid robots such as collaborative robots, which enable human-robot interactions without physical separation in the workplace context. Common definitions of trust in the HRI context emphasise that trust is based on concrete expectations regarding individual goals. Therefore, I propose a three-dimensional notion of trust that binds trust to a reference object and accounts for various coexisting goals at the workplace. Furthermore, the assumption that robots represent trustees in a narrower sense is challenged by unfolding influential relational networks of trust within the organisational context. In terms of practical implications, trust is distinguished from acceptance and actual technology usage, which may be promoted by trust, but are strongly influenced by contextual moderating factors. In addition, theoretical arguments for considering distrust not only as the opposite of trust, but as an alternative and coexisting complexity reduction mechanism are outlined. Finally, the article presents key conclusions and future research avenues.