Children’s Indiscriminate Helping Behavior Toward the Robot Dog: Can Voice Influence It?

Abstract

In humans and robots’ vast and complex interaction mechanism, children’s study of prosocial behavior toward robots is a unique and humanized perspective. Many studies have confirmed that children can extend their helping behavior from humans to social robots. Meanwhile, the robots’ different characteristics and expressions are the essential factors affecting children showing their helping behavior to the robots. This study aims to investigate whether the robot dog’s “grievance” voice can affect the performance of children’s altruistic behavior when it can’t come out from a cage itself. Forty-four 4-year-old children were randomly assigned the two conditions, and the results showed that the presence or absence of aggressive voices does have an impact on the display of helping behaviors in young children. The findings can provide meaningful advice to parents and workers in the field of preschool.