Ample research in social psychology has highlighted the importance of the human face in human–human interactions. However, there is a less clear understanding of how a humanoid robot’s face is perceived by humans. One of the primary goals of this study was to investigate how initial perceptions of robots are influenced by the extent of human-likeness of the robot’s face, particularly when the robot is intended to provide assistance with tasks in the home that are traditionally carried out by humans. Moreover, although robots have the potential to help both younger and older adults, there is limited knowledge of whether the two age groups’ perceptions differ. In this study, younger (\(N=32\)) and older adults (\(N=32\)) imagined interacting with a robot in four different task contexts and rated robot faces of varying levels of human-likeness. Participants were also interviewed to assess their reasons for particular preferences. This multi-method approach identified patterns of perceptions across different appearances as well as reasons that influence the formation of such perceptions. Overall, the results indicated that people’s perceptions of robot faces vary as a function of robot human-likeness. People tended to over-generalize their understanding of humans to build expectations about a human-looking robot’s behavior and capabilities. Additionally, preferences for humanoid robots depended on the task although younger and older adults differed in their preferences for certain humanoid appearances. The results of this study have implications both for advancing theoretical understanding of robot perceptions and for creating and applying guidelines for the design of robots.

中文翻译：

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为什么有些人形面孔比其他人的面孔更积极：人感和任务的影响。

社会心理学方面的大量研究突出了人脸在人与人互动中的重要性。但是，人们对人形机器人的脸部知之甚少。这项研究的主要目的之一是研究机器人的初始感知如何受到机器人面部表情的影响，特别是当机器人旨在为传统上由家庭执行的任务提供协助时人类。而且，尽管机器人有潜力帮助年轻人和老年人，但关于这两个年龄组的看法是否不同的知识仍然有限。在这项研究中，年轻人（\（N = 32 \））和老年人（\（N = 32 \））想象在四个不同的任务环境中与机器人进行交互，并对机器人的人像化程度有所不同进行了评级。还对参与者进行了采访，以评估他们偏爱特定原因的原因。这种多方法的方法确定了跨不同外观的感知模式以及影响这种感知形成的原因。总体而言，结果表明，人们对机器人面部的感知随机器人的人性而变化。人们倾向于过度概括对人类的理解，以建立对看似人类的机器人的行为和能力的期望。此外，对人形机器人的偏好取决于任务，尽管年轻人和老年人对某些人形外观的偏好有所不同。