Abstract Stereotypes are cognitive shortcuts that facilitate efficient social judgments about others. Just as causal attributions affect perceptions of people, they may similarly affect perceptions of technology, particularly anthropomorphic technology such as robots. In a scenario-based study, younger and older adults judged the performance and capability of an anthropomorphised robot that appeared young or old. In some cases, the robot successfully performed a task while at other times it failed. Results showed that older adult participants were more susceptible to aging stereotypes as indicated by trust. In addition, both younger and older adult participants succumbed to aging stereotypes when measuring perceived capability of the robots. Finally, a summary of causal reasoning results showed that our participants may have applied aging stereotypes to older-appearing robots: they were most likely to give credit to a properly functioning robot when it appeared young and performed a cognitive task. Our results tentatively suggest that human theories of social cognition do not wholly translate to technology-based contexts and that future work may elaborate on these findings. Practitioner summary: Perception and expectations of the capabilities of robots may influence whether users accept and use them, especially older users. The current results suggest that care must be taken in the design of these robots as users may stereotype them.

中文翻译：

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影响年轻人和老年人机器人行为因果归因的因素

摘要 刻板印象是认知捷径，有助于对他人进行有效的社会判断。正如因果归因会影响人们的看法一样，它们也可能类似地影响对技术的看法，尤其是对机器人等拟人化技术的看法。在一项基于场景的研究中，年轻人和老年人对一个看起来年轻或年老的拟人化机器人的性能和能力进行了判断。在某些情况下，机器人成功地执行了任务，而在其他时候却失败了。结果表明，老年参与者更容易受到信任所表明的老化刻板印象。此外，在测量机器人的感知能力时，年轻和年长的参与者都屈服于陈旧的刻板印象。最后，因果推理结果的总结表明，我们的参与者可能已经将老化的刻板印象应用于外观较老的机器人：当机器人看起来很年轻并执行认知任务时，他们最有可能认为功能正常的机器人。我们的结果初步表明，人类社会认知理论并没有完全转化为基于技术的背景，未来的工作可能会详细阐述这些发现。从业者总结：对机器人能力的认知和期望，可能会影响用户是否接受和使用，尤其是老年用户。目前的结果表明，在设计这些机器人时必须小心，因为用户可能会对它们产生刻板印象。我们的结果初步表明，人类社会认知理论并没有完全转化为基于技术的背景，未来的工作可能会详细阐述这些发现。从业者总结：对机器人能力的认知和期望，可能会影响用户是否接受和使用，尤其是老年用户。目前的结果表明，在设计这些机器人时必须小心，因为用户可能会对它们产生刻板印象。我们的结果初步表明，人类社会认知理论并没有完全转化为基于技术的背景，未来的工作可能会详细阐述这些发现。从业者总结：对机器人能力的认知和期望，可能会影响用户是否接受和使用，尤其是老年用户。目前的结果表明，在设计这些机器人时必须小心，因为用户可能会对它们产生刻板印象。