Robots are transforming organizations, with pundits forecasting that robots will increasingly perform managerial tasks. One such key managerial task is the evaluation and delivery of feedback regarding an employee's performance, including negative feedback. However, within this context of delivering negative feedback, we suggest that anthropomorphism—a factor most practitioners and researchers consider as a panacea for overcoming difficulties in human-robot interaction—can backfire. Drawing upon the theory of mind perception, we find that an anthropomorphised robot supervisor delivering negative feedback is more likely than a non-anthropomorphised robot to be perceived as possessing agency. This perceived agency causes perceptions of abuse to arise, which in turn leads to higher supervisor-directed retaliation (operationalized as powering down the robot supervisor; Study 1). These findings even extend to third-person observers witnessing the delivery of negative feedback, again culminating in supervisor-directed retaliation (Study 2). We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

机器人正在改变组织，专家预测机器人将越来越多地执行管理任务。一项这样的关键管理任务是评估和提供有关员工绩效的反馈，包括负面反馈。然而，在这种提供负面反馈的背景下，我们建议拟人化——大多数从业者和研究人员认为是克服人机交互困难的灵丹妙药的一个因素——可能会适得其反。利用心理感知理论，我们发现提供负反馈的拟人化机器人主管比非拟人化机器人更有可能被视为拥有代理。这种被感知的代理导致产生虐待的感知，这反过来导致更高的主管指导报复（操作为关闭机器人主管；研究 1）。这些发现甚至扩展到目睹负面反馈传递的第三人称观察者，再次导致主管指导的报复（研究 2）。最后，我们讨论了这些发现的理论和实践意义。