As robots begin to enter roles in which they work closely with human teammates or peers, it is critical to understand how people trust them based on how they interpret the robot’s behavior. In this paper we investigated the interplay between trust in a robot and people’s perceptions of the robot’s emotional intelligence. We used a vignette-based method to explore the following questions: (1) Do subjects perceive differences in robot EI, and is their trust in the robot influenced by differences in the robot’s reliability and capability? (2) Does a robot’s EI influence how much it is trusted and conversely does a robot’s capability and reliability influence how emotionally intelligent it is perceived to be? (3) Do people trust male and female robots differently when the robots exhibit different levels of EI or different levels of capability and reliability, and do gender stereotypical expectations related to EI transfer to trust?; (4) Does focusing on the robot’s EI increase one’s trust in the robot? (5) Is the interplay between trust, EI and gender the same for different levels of evoked social presence and human-likeness (i.e., when the interaction is presented in different modalities, text or spoken dialogue when the robot’s voice is actually heard)? We found that trust in the robot was influenced by the level of the robot’s EI (p < .001) and that gender stereotypical expectations related to EI were transferred to trust (p \(=\) .006), but gender effects on trust disappeared when only capability and reliability (robot’s trustworthiness) were manipulated but not the robot’s EI (p = .103). Surprisingly, we found that people trusted the robot more when the interaction was presented in text format (p \(=\) .024), going against our hypothesis that spoken dialogue would evoke more social presence and thus bolster EI perception and instill more trust. We suggest that this effect might be due to people’s expectations of a more expressive and human-like voice. Finally, we also found that people’s trust ratings in the robot were higher when they were made to notice and think about the robot’s EI, by answering EI questionnaires prior to trust questionnaires (p = .022). We discuss the implications of our findings for robot design and HRI research.

随着机器人开始扮演与人类队友或同伴紧密合作的角色，根据人们对机器人行为的理解，了解人们如何信任他们是至关重要的。在本文中，我们研究了对机器人的信任与人们对机器人情绪智力的感知之间的相互作用。我们使用了基于小插图的方法来探讨以下问题：（1）对象是否感知到机器人EI的差异，他们对机器人的信任是否受到机器人可靠性和能力差异的影响？（2）机器人的EI是否会影响其信任程度，反之会影响机器人的能力和可靠性吗？（3）当人们表现出不同水平的EI或不同水平的能力和可靠性时，人们对男性和女性机器人的信任程度是否不同，与EI相关的性别刻板印象是否转移到信任中？（4）专注于机器人的EI是否会增加对机器人的信任？（5）信任，EI和性别之间的相互作用是否对于不同程度的诱发的社会存在和相似性相同（即，当以不同的方式呈现相互作用时，当实际听到机器人的声音时进行文本或语音对话）？我们发现，对机器人的信任受到机器人EI（p  <.001），并且与EI有关的性别刻板印象已转移到信任中（p  \（= \）.  006），但是，只有操作能力和可靠性（机器人的可信赖性）而不操作机器人的EI时，性别对信任的影响才消失（p  = .103）。令人惊讶的是，我们发现当交互以文本格式（p  \（= \） .024），这与我们的假设相反，即语音对话会唤起更多的社会参与感，从而增强EI的认知并灌输更多的信任。我们建议，这种效果可能是由于人们期望具有更富表现力和人性化的声音。最后，我们还发现，通过在信任调查表之前回答EI调查表，使人们注意到并思考机器人的EI，人们对机器人的信任度较高（p  = .022）。我们讨论了我们的发现对机器人设计和HRI研究的意义。