Agency Effects on Robot Trust in Different Age Groups

Trust plays a major role when introducing interactive robots into people’s personal spaces, which, in large part, depends on how they perceive the robot. This paper presents the initial results of an investigation into the perception of robot agency as a potential factor influencing trust. We manipulated a robot’s agency to see how trust would change as a result. Our preliminary results indicate age as a confounding factor while we did not find differences when priming robot autonomy.