The effects of a robot’s nonverbal behavior on users’ mimicry and evaluation

Abstract

In an attempt to replicate earlier research on intelligent agents for robots, we analysed the effects of the presence and absence of a robot’s nonverbal behavior on users’ nonverbal behavior and evaluation with a between subjects experimental study (N = 90). Results demonstrated that when the robot shows nonverbal behavior (head movement and deictic, illustrative and rhythmic gesture) participants evaluated it more positively. Against expectations, however, participants displayed more nonverbal behavior when the robot only used speech.