The human physical resemblance of humanoid social robots (HRSs) has proven to be particularly effective in interactions with humans in different contexts. In particular, two main factors affect the quality of human–robot interaction, the physical appearance and the behaviors performed by the robot. In this study, we examined the psychological effect of two HRSs, NAO and Pepper. Although some studies have shown that these two robots are very similar in terms of the human likeness, other evidence has shown some differences in their design affecting different psychological elements of the human partner. The present study aims to analyze the variability of the attributions of mental states (AMS), expectations of robotic development and negative attitudes as a function of the physical appearance of two HRSs after observing a real interaction with a human (an experimenter). For this purpose, two groups of young adults were recruited, one for the NAO (N = 100, M = 20.22) and the other for the Pepper (N = 74, M = 21.76). The results showed that both the observation of interaction and the type of robot affect the AMS, with a greater AMS to Pepper robot compared to NAO. People's expectations, instead, are influenced by the interaction and are independent of the type of robot. Finally, negative attitudes are independent of both the interaction and the type of robot. The study showed that also subtle differences in the physical appearance of HSRs have significant effects on how humans perceived robots.

中文翻译：

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机器人并不完全相同：年轻人对两种人形社交机器人的期望，态度和心理归因

事实证明，类人型社交机器人（HRS）与人的身体相似性在不同背景下与人的互动中特别有效。特别是，两个主要因素会影响人机交互的质量，外观和机器人执行的行为。在这项研究中，我们检查了NHR和Pepper这两种HRS的心理作用。尽管一些研究表明这两个机器人在人类相似性方面非常相似，但其他证据表明，它们在设计上的某些差异会影响人类伴侣的不同心理元素。本研究旨在分析精神状态（AMS）归因的变异性，在观察到与人类（实验者）的真实互动后，对机器人发展和负面态度的期望，取决于两个HRS的物理外观。为此，招募了两批年轻人，其中一人是为NAO（N  = 100，M  = 20.22），另一个是Pepper（N  = 74，M  = 21.76）。结果表明，交互观察和机器人类型都会影响AMS，与NAO相比，Pepper机器人的AMS更大。相反，人们的期望受到交互作用的影响，并且与机器人的类型无关。最后，消极态度与机器人的互动和类型无关。研究表明，高铁的物理外观上的细微差异也会对人类对机器人的感知产生重大影响。