Trust and technology

Young children are more likely to trust robots than humans, a new study has found. Researchers discovered they were also more likely to believe that humans have made a mistake on purpose.

The study presented 111 children aged three to six with conflicting information delivered by robots and humans. They watched videos of them consistently labelling familiar objects either correctly or incorrectly then were later shown the same agents labelling new objects.

The children were then asked questions about the agents they’d seen, including who they would want as a friend, who they preferred as a teacher and who they would tell a secret to. They overwhelmingly picked the reliable robot over the reliable human to trust with a secret and younger children were more likely to prefer robots to humans than older children.

The study, published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, said: “Although more long-term research is needed, this fascination for robots has the potential to be leveraged in educational settings to overcome the social deficit associated with other forms of educational technologies.”

Read the full article.