Who like androids more: Japanese or US Americans?

Abstract

This study investigates to what degree the users' cultural background influences their perception of a robot's anthropomorphism and likeability. More specifically, robots with a conventional robot-like appearance were compared to highly anthropomorphic androids. The US American participants like the robots on average more than the Japanese participants do, but a strong interaction effect was observed between the participants' cultural background and the type of robot. The Japanese participants had a strong preference for conventional robots. This confirms the stereotype that Japanese like conventional robots. However, this does not hold true for highly anthropomorphic androids, which they liked less than the US American participants did. This study focused on the perception of static images of robots and the results may be different for the perception of movies of moving robots or, to an even greater extent, the perception when standing right in front of a moving robot. © 2008 IEEE.