Can Humans Be Deceived by a Robot?

—Unexpected Behavior is a Cue for Attributing Intentions to a Robot—

Abstract

In the present study, we investigated whether a robot is able to deceive a human by producing a behavior against his/her prediction. A feeling of being deceived by a robot would be a strong indicator that the human treated the robot as an intentional entity. We conducted a psychological experiment in which a subject played Darumasan ga Koronda, a Japanese children's game, with a robot. The main strategy to deceive a subject is to make him/her believe that the robot is unintelligent and unable to chant and move quickly. The experimental result indicated that unexpected change in robot's behavior gave rise to an impression of being deceived.