Influence of a Humanoid Robot in Human

Decision-Making When Using Direct & Indirect

Requests
Alexander Lopez

Christian Penaloza

Francisco Cuellar

Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru

Email: lopez.alexander@pucp.pe

ATR Institute of Japan

Email: chpesa@gmail.com

Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru

Email: cuellar.ff@pucp.pe

AbstractThe objective of this research is to investigate the

personality factors that influence human decision-making in
particular scenarios such as during the interaction with a robot
or a human counterpart. We conducted the experiment in a
public environment in which participants were approached by
either a human or a robot agent. The agent asked a verbal
request in a direct or indirect manner that participants could
accept or decline. We used the Ten Item Personality Measure
(TIPI) in order to measure the personality traits of the agent
that had a strong influence in the acceptance decision of the
participants. Our results suggest that within the context that our
experiment took place, the humanoid robot was more effective
at influencing human-decision making than the human agent,
in particular when indirect request was used. The personality
traits that made the robot to be more effective were: extrovert,
enthusiastic and sympathetic.

there are still few studies that have used this principle in order
to gain an insight about the effect of this approach. Kennedy et
al.[10], for instance, investigated the effect of indirect requests
made by a robot to children and confirmed that this approach
is in fact a better way to influence human-decision making.
However, the type of request is not the only important factor
that could influence human decision-making, but also other
factors such as the personality of the person or robot that made
the request could be a crucial factor. In order to investigate the
personality factors that influence human decision-making, we
used the Ten Item Personality Measure (TIPI) [11] in order to
measure the personality traits of a robot or human agent that
have better perception by the participants for both: direct and
indirect requests.

I. I NTRODUCTION

II. E XPERIMENT

Robots are rapidly integrating into human society and

in the future they are expected to coexist with humans in
every home [1]. As human-robot interaction becomes more
common, humans and robots will need to adapt and change
their behaviors and actions. Eventually, the decisions that
humans make in every aspect of their daily life might be
positively or negatively influenced by their interaction with
a robot. Psychology and robotic researchers have studied the
influence of a robot in human decision-making from diverse
perspectives. For instance, Bisio et al.[2] investigated the way
in which a visual stimulus and the properties of the observed
robot actions influence a human observers motor response.
On the other hand, Spaulding et al.[3] and Oleson et al.[4]
demonstrated the significance of trust during human-robot
interaction. Luen et al.[5] investigated the effects of robot
autonomy and group orientation on human decision-making,
and it was demonstrated that people prefer the interaction with
a humanoid robot instead of a virtual agent. Human attention
also plays a very important role during the interaction between
robots and humans and its effects on human decision-making
have been investigated by Shinozawa et al.[6]. Other studies
have investigated the effects of human decision-making when
robots provide recommendations [7] and in some cases when
human participants are directly told what to do by the robot
[8]. Although it has been suggested that humans tend to make
requests indirectly as this is considered to be more polite [9],

A. Description
We designed an experiment in which groups of students
were approached by a human or robot agent, who asked a
request in a direct or indirect manner. Students who accepted
the request were asked to fill out a questionnaire about the
personality traits of the agent which they considered to be
important factors for their decision to accept the request.
All the students experiment the same message in the same
conditions during the request.
B. Methodology
It was decided to use a human agent and a robot agent in
order to compare the perception of the people towards each
of them and discover the personality traits that were crucial
for influencing the decision of the participants. Moreover,
we intended to compare the two types of requests (direct &
indirect) in order to find out which type is more effective. The
request concerned a questionnaire that participants were asked
to answer to collaborate with the thesis of a student. In total,
four experimental conditions were conducted as follows:
Day 1: Human agent - Direct request
Day 2: Robot agent - Direct request
Day 3: Human agent - Indirect request
Day 4: Robot agent - Indirect request
Regarding the way in which the agent approached the group
of people; in the case of the robot, since we used the small

Fig. 1. Experimental conditions: 1) human agent - direct request, 2) human

agent - indirect request, 3) robot agent - direct request, and 4) robot agent indirect request

Fig. 3. Personality traits of Human VS Robot using a Indirect request

TABLE I
N UMBER OF PEOPLE ATTENDING THE EXPERIMENT
Direct
Indirect

Robot/Acceptance
27 / 85.71%
31 / 80.64%

Person/Acceptance
41 / 60.98%
38 / 52.26%

Tab. I present the number of students that were part of the

experiment and the number of acceptance to the survey.
IV. C ONCLUSION
Fig. 2. Personality traits of Human VS Robot using a Direct request

humanoid robot Nao, an assistant carried the robot and placed

it on top of the table where the group of students were
gathered. The assistant was instructed not to say anything
to the students and was just limited to pressing the robots
head button to start the interaction. The robot and the human
communicated the same request and used simple natural head
and hand gestures. The students who took the survey in one
of the days didnt participate in the others days that the
experiment took place.
III. R ESULTS
A. Personality traits of Human VS Robot using a Direct
request
There are many situations in which a direct request is
preferred for a particular situation, and thus we compared the
personality traits of the human and robot agent during this
situation. Fig. 2 shows the four personality traits with significant difference. These results show that during for the direct
request condition, the robot was perceived as more ExtrovertEnthusiastic, Sympathetic-Warm, and Calm-Emotionally
stable than the human agent. On the other hand, the human
agent was perceived as Conventional-Slightly creative compared to the robot.
B. Personality traits of Human VS Robot using a Indirect
request
After comparing the personality traits of the human and
robot when using an indirect request, we found three personality traits that had significant difference as shown in
Fig. 3. Similarly to the direct request condition, these results show that during for the indirect request condition, the
robot was also perceived as more Extrovert-Enthusiastic and
Sympathetic-Warm than the human agent. Moreover, in the
same way as the direct request, the human agent was perceived
as Conventional-Slightly creative compared to the robot. The

In this study we investigated the personality traits that

influence human decision-making in particular scenarios such
as during the interaction with a robot or a human. In overall,
we found that the humanoid robot was more effective at
influencing the decision of participants. Although, we did
not find any personality traits of the human agent that were
particularly significant at influencing participants when using
direct or indirect request, we did find two personality traits
(Extrovert-Enthusiastic and Sympathetic-Warm) that were
significant for the robot during indirect request.
V. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The autors wish to thank the Pontificia Universidad Catolica
del Peru and DGI-PUCP.
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