Robots that admit mistakes foster better conversation in humans

Three people and a robot form a team playing a game. The robot makes a mistake, costing the team a round. Like any good teammate, it acknowledges the error. " Sorry, guys, I made the mistake this round," it says. "I know it may be hard to believe, but robots make mistakes too." This scenario occurred multiple times during a Yale-led study of robots' effects on human-to-human interactions. The study, which published on March 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , showed that the humans on teams that included a robot expressing vulnerability communicated more with each other and later reported having a more positive group experience than people teamed with silent robots or with robots that made neutral statements, like reciting the game's score. " We know that robots can influence the behavior of humans they interact with directly, but how robots affect the way humans engage with each other is less well understood," said Margaret L. Traeger , a Ph.D.