Perception of an Uncertain Ethical Reasoning Robot: A Pilot Study

Abstract

The study investigates the effect of uncertainty expressed by a robot facing a moral dilemma on humans' moral judgment and impression formation. Participants (N = 80) were shown a video of a robot explaining a moral dilemma and the decision it makes. The robot either expressed certainty or uncertainty about its decision. Participants rated how much blame the robot deserves for its action, the moral wrongness of the action, and their impression of the robot in terms of four scale dimensions measuring social perception. The results suggest that participants that were not familiar with the moral dilemma assign more blame to the robot for the same action when it expresses uncertainty, while expressed uncertainty has less effect on moral wrongness judgments. There was no significant effect of expressed uncertainty on participants' impression of the robot. We discuss implications of this result for the design of social robots.