Why do children abuse robots?
Tatsuya Nomura | Ryukoku University, Japan | ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories
Takayuki Kanda | ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories
Hiroyoshi Kidokoro | ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories
Yoshitaka Suehiro | ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories
Sachie Yamada | Tokai University, Japan
We found that children sometimes abused a social robot placed in a shopping mall hallway. They verbally abused the robot, repeatedly obstructed its path, and sometimes even kicked and punched the robot. To investigate the reasons for the abuse, we conducted a field study in which we interviewed visiting children who exhibited serious abusive behaviors, including physical contact. We analyzed interview contents to determine whether the children perceived the robot as human-like, why they abused it, and whether they thought that the robot would suffer from their abusive behavior. We obtained valid interviews from 23 children (age range, 5–9 years old) over 13 days of observations. We found that 1) the majority of the children engaged in abuse because they were curious about the robot’s reactions or enjoyed abusing it and considered it human-like, and 2) about half of them believed the robot was capable of perceiving their abusive behaviors.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Related topics
- 2.1Previous research on robot abuse
- 2.2Why do children exhibit abusive behavior?
- 2.3How do children perceive robots?
- 3.Definition of abusive behaviors toward robots
- 4.Field study
- 4.1Robot used in the study
- 4.2Procedure
- 4.2.1Selection of respondents
- 4.2.2Semi-structured interview protocol
- 4.3Study respondents
- 5.Data analysis
- 5.1Analysis procedure
- 5.1.1Label making, grouping, category extraction
- 5.1.2Validation of categories
- 5.2Types of extracted responses
- 5.2.1Perceived human-likeness of the robot
- 5.2.2Reasons for abusive behaviors
- 5.2.3Did the children assume the robot was capable of perceiving abusive behaviors?
- 5.1Analysis procedure
- 6.Discussion
- 6.1Research questions
- 6.2Design implications
- 6.3Potential link to human abuse?
- 6.4Insight for strategy to avoid being abused
- 6.5Limitations
- Acknowledgments
- Note
-
References
Published online: 30 March 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.17.3.02nom
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.17.3.02nom
References
Arluke, A.
(2002) Animal Abuse as Dirty Play. Symbolic Interaction, 251: 405–430. 
Bartneck, C., & Hu, J.
(2008) Exploring the abuse of robots. Interaction Studies, 91: 415–433.
Beran, T. N., Ramirez-Serrano, A., Kuzyk, R., Fior, M., & Nugent, S.
(2011) Understanding how children understand robots: Perceived animism in child – robot interaction. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 691: 539–550.
Brahnam, S., & De Angeli, A.
(2008) Special issue on the abuse and misuse of social agents. Interacting with Computers, 201: 287–291.
Brscic, D., Kidokoro, H., Suehiro, Y., & Kanda, T.
(2015) Escaping from Children’s Abuse of Social Robots. In: Proceedings of ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI2015), pp. 59–66.
Bryant, B. K.
(1990) Mental health, temperament, family, and friends: perspectives on children’s empathy and social perspective taking. In: Empathy and its development (Eisenberg, N., & Straye, J. (Eds)), pp. 245–270.
Burgard, W., Cremers, A. B., Fox, D., Hähnel, D., Lakemeyer, G., Schulz, D., Steiner, W., & Thrun, S.
(1998) The Interactive Museum Tour-Guide Robot. In: Proceedings of the Fifteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 11–18.
Creed, C., & Beale, R.
(2006) Agent Abuse: The Potential Dangers of Socially Intelligent Embodied Agents. In: Proceedings of Workshop on Misuse and Abuse of Interactive Technologies.
Dryden, W., & Branch, R.
(Eds.) (2012) The CBT Handbook. Sage.
Endresen, I. M., & Olweus, D.
(2001) Self-reported empathy in Norwegian adolescents: Sex differences, age trends, and relationship to bullying. In: Constructive & destructive behavior: Implications for family, school, & society (Bohart, A. C. & Stipek, D. J. (Eds)), pp. 147–165.
Friedman, B., Kahn, P. H., Hagman, J.
(2003) Hardware companions? – What online AIBO discussion forums reveal about the human-robotic relationship. In: CHI 2003 Proceedings (long paper), pp. 273–280.
Gini, G., Albiero, P., Benelli, B., & Altoè, G.
(2007) Does empathy predict adolescents’ bullying and defending behavior? Aggressive behavior, 331: 467–476.
Gross, H.-M., Boehme, H., Schroeter, C., Mueller, S., Koenig, A., Einhorn, E., Martin, C., Merten, M., & Bley, A.
(2009) Toomas: Interactive Shopping Guide Robots in Everyday Use – Final Implementation and Experiences from Long-Term Field Trials. In: Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 2005–2012.
Han, J., Jo, M., Park, S., & Kim, S.
(2005) The Educational Use of Home Robots for Children. In: Proceedings of IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, pp. 378–383.
Kahn, P. H., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, H., Freier, N. G., Severson, R. L, Gill, B. T., Ruckert, J. H., & Shen, S.
(2012a) “Robovie, You’ll Have to Go into the Closet Now”: Children’s Social and Moral Relationships with a Humanoid Robot. Developmental Psychology, 481: 303–314.
Kahn, P. H., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, H., Gill, B. T., Ruckert, J. H., Shen, S., Gary, H. E., Reichert, A. L., Freier, N. G., & Severson, R. L.
(2012b) Do People Hold a Humanoid Robot Morally Accountable for the Harm It Causes? In: Proceedings of ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, pp. 33–40.
Kahn, P. H., Reichert, A. L., Gary, H. E., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, H., Shen, S., Ruckert, J. H., & Gill, B. T.
(2011) The New Ontological Category Hypothesis in Human-Robot Interaction. In: Proceedings of ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, pp. 159–160.
Kanda, T., Hirano, T., Eaton, D., & Ishiguro, H.
(2004) Interactive robots as social partners and peer tutors for children: a field trial. Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 191: 61–84.
Kawakita, J.
(1967) A Way of Thinking for Creativity. Chuo-Shinsho (in Japanese).
Larkin, S.
(2009) >Metacognition in Young Children>
, Routledge.
Lennon, R., & Eisenberg, N.
(1987) Gender and age differences in empathy and sympathy. In: Empathy and its development (Eisenberg, N, & Strayer, J. (Eds)), pp. 195–217.
Riek, L. D., Rabinowitch, T-C., Chakrabarti, B., & Robinson, P.
(2009) How anthropomorphism affects empathy toward robots. In: Proceedings of ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, pp. 245–246.
Ros, R., Nalin, M., Wood, R., Baxter, P., Looije, R., Demiris, Y., Belpaeme, T., Giusti, A., & Pozzi, C.
(2011) Child-robot interaction in the wild: advice to the aspiring experimenter. In: Proceedings of 13th international conference on multimodal interfaces, pp. 335–342.
Rosenthal-von der Pütten, A. M., Schulte, F. P., Eimler, S. C., Sobieraj, S., Hoffmann, L., Maderwald, S., Brand, M., & Krämer, N. C.
(2014) Investigations on empathy towards humans and robots using fMRI. Computers in Human Behavior, 331: 201–212.
Salvini, P., Ciaravella, G., Yu, W., Ferri, G., Manzi, A., Mazzolai, B., Laschi, C., Oh, S.R., & Dario, P.
(2010) How safe are service robots in urban environments? Bullying a Robot. In: Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, pp. 1–7.
Scupin, R.
(1997) The KJ Method: A Technique for Analyzing Data Derived from Japanese Ethnology. Human Organization, 561: 233–237.
Strohmeier, D.
(2014) Bullying and its Underlying Mechanisms. Education.com, http://www.education.com/reference/article/reasons-for-bullying/
Tanaka, F., Movellan, J. R., Fortenberry, B., & Aisaka, K.
(2006) Daily HRI evaluation at a classroom environment: reports from dance interaction experiments. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, pp. 3–9.
Tani, F., Greenman, P. G., Schneider, B. H., & Fregoso, M.
(2003) Bullying and the Big Five: A Study of Childhood Personality and Participant Roles in Bullying Incidents. School Psychology International, 241: 131–146.
Cited by
Cited by 42 other publications
Abrams, Anna M. H., Pia S. C. Dautzenberg, Carla Jakobowsky, Stefan Ladwig & Astrid M. Rosenthal-von der Pütten
2021.
In Proceedings of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction,
► pp. 272 ff. 
Alenljung, Beatrice, Rebecca Andreasson, Robert Lowe, Erik Billing & Jessica Lindblom
2018. Conveying Emotions by Touch to the Nao Robot: A User Experience Perspective.
Multimodal Technologies and Interaction 2:4 ► pp. 82 ff.
Allan, D. D., Andrew J. Vonasch & Christoph Bartneck
2022.
In 2022 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI),
► pp. 215 ff.
Belpaeme, Tony
2020.
In Human-Robot Interaction [Springer Series on Bio- and Neurosystems, 12],
► pp. 355 ff.
Blaurock, Marah, Martina Čaić, Mehmet Okan & Alexander P. Henkel
2022. A transdisciplinary review and framework of consumer interactions with embodied social robots: Design, delegate, and deploy.
International Journal of Consumer Studies 46:5 ► pp. 1877 ff.
Cappuccio, Massimiliano L., Anco Peeters & William McDonald
2020. Sympathy for Dolores: Moral Consideration for Robots Based on Virtue and Recognition.
Philosophy & Technology 33:1 ► pp. 9 ff.
Cappuccio, Massimiliano L., Eduardo B. Sandoval, Omar Mubin, Mohammad Obaid & Mari Velonaki
2021. Can Robots Make us Better Humans?.
International Journal of Social Robotics 13:1 ► pp. 7 ff.
Carolus, Astrid, Carolin Wienrich, Anna Törke, Tobias Friedel, Christian Schwietering & Mareike Sperzel
2021. ‘Alexa, I feel for you!’ Observers’ Empathetic Reactions towards a Conversational Agent.
Frontiers in Computer Science 3
Coghlan, Simon, Frank Vetere, Jenny Waycott & Barbara Barbosa Neves
2019. Could Social Robots Make Us Kinder or Crueller to Humans and Animals?.
International Journal of Social Robotics 11:5 ► pp. 741 ff.
Constantinescu, Mihaela, Radu Uszkai, Constantin Vică & Cristina Voinea
2022. Children-Robot Friendship, Moral Agency, and Aristotelian Virtue Development.
Frontiers in Robotics and AI 9
Davidson, Rebecca, Kristyn Sommer & Mark Nielsen
2019.
In 2019 14th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI),
► pp. 709 ff.
Duan, Jiali, Qian Wang, Lerrel Pinto, C.-C. Jay Kuo & Stefanos Nikolaidis
2019.
In 2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS),
► pp. 1056 ff.
Favier, Anthony, Phani Teja Singamaneni & Rachid Alami
2022.
In 2022 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI),
► pp. 760 ff.
Fosch Villaronga, Eduard, Aurelia Tamò-Larrieux & Christoph Lutz
2018. Did I Tell You My New Therapist is a Robot? Ethical, Legal, and Societal Issues of Healthcare and Therapeutic Robots.
SSRN Electronic Journal
Fosch-Villaronga, Eduard, Christoph Lutz & Aurelia Tamò-Larrieux
2020. Gathering Expert Opinions for Social Robots’ Ethical, Legal, and Societal Concerns: Findings from Four International Workshops.
International Journal of Social Robotics 12:2 ► pp. 441 ff.
Hannibal, Glenda
2021.
In Companion of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction,
► pp. 288 ff.
Hickton, Luke, Matthew Lewis & Lola Cañamero
2020.
In Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 12228],
► pp. 234 ff.
Hieida, Chie & Takayuki Nagai
2022. Survey and perspective on social emotions in robotics.
Advanced Robotics 36:1-2 ► pp. 17 ff.
Ju, Wendy & Sharon Yavo-Ayalon
2022. Autonomous Futures: Implications for Smart Cities.
Technology|Architecture + Design 6:2 ► pp. 133 ff.
Keijsers, Merel, Christoph Bartneck & Friederike Eyssel
2021. What’s to bullying a bot?.
Interaction Studies. Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems 22:1 ► pp. 55 ff.
Keijsers, Merel, Christoph Bartneck & Friederike Eyssel
2022. Pay Them No Mind: the Influence of Implicit and Explicit Robot Mind Perception on the Right to be Protected.
International Journal of Social Robotics 14:2 ► pp. 499 ff.
Kim, TaeWoo, Hyejin Lee, Michelle Yoosun Kim, SunAh Kim & Adam Duhachek
2022. AI increases unethical consumer behavior due to reduced anticipatory guilt.
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science
Ku, Hyunjin, Jason J. Choi, Soomin Lee, Sunho Jang & Wonkyung Do
2018.
In Companion of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction,
► pp. 161 ff.
LC, RAY
2021.
In Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction,
► pp. 1 ff.
Lee, Yi-Ching, Ali Momen & Jennifer LaFreniere
2021. Attributions of social interactions: Driving among self-driving vs. conventional vehicles.
Technology in Society 66 ► pp. 101631 ff.
Louie, Belinda, Elin A. Björling & Annie Camey Kuo
2021. The Desire for Social Robots to Support English Language Learners: Exploring Robot Perceptions of Teachers, Parents, and Students.
Frontiers in Education 6
Louie, Belinda, Elin A. Björling, Annie Camey Kuo & Patrícia Alves-Oliveira
2022. Designing for culturally responsive social robots: An application of a participatory framework.
Frontiers in Robotics and AI 9
Moore, Dylan, Rebecca Currano, Michael Shanks & David Sirkin
2020.
In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction,
► pp. 201 ff.
Mutlu, Bilge
2021. The virtual and the physical: two frames of mind.
iScience 24:2 ► pp. 101965 ff.
Nomura, Tatsuya, Takayuki Kanda & Sachie Yamada
2019.
In 2019 14th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI),
► pp. 540 ff.
Oravec, Jo Ann
2022.
In Good Robot, Bad Robot [Social and Cultural Studies of Robots and AI, ],
► pp. 205 ff.
Pashevich, Ekaterina
2022. Can communication with social robots influence how children develop empathy? Best-evidence synthesis.
AI & SOCIETY 37:2 ► pp. 579 ff.
Roed Frederiksen, Morten & Kasper Stoy
2020.
In 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS),
► pp. 11376 ff.
Rossmy, Beat, Sarah Theres Völkel, Elias Naphausen, Patricia Kimm, Alexander Wiethoff & Andreas Muxel
2020.
In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference,
► pp. 179 ff.
Saffari, Ehsan, Seyed Ramezan Hosseini, Alireza Taheri & Ali Meghdari
2021. “Does cinema form the future of robotics?”: a survey on fictional robots in sci-fi movies.
SN Applied Sciences 3:6
Sanoubari, Elaheh, James Young, Andrew Houston & Kerstin Dautenhahn
2021.
In 2021 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN),
► pp. 931 ff.
Tan, Xiang Zhi, Marynel Vázquez, Elizabeth J. Carter, Cecilia G. Morales & Aaron Steinfeld
2018.
In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction,
► pp. 169 ff.
Torpegaard, Julie, Line Søndergaard Knudsen, Morten Præst Linnet, Mikael B. Skov & Timothy Merritt
2022. Preschool children’s social and playful interactions with a play-facilitating cardboard robot.
International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction 31 ► pp. 100435 ff.
Tsumura, Takahiro & Seiji Yamada
2022.
In 2022 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN),
► pp. 22 ff.
Wagner, Alan R.
2021. Robot-Guided Evacuation as a Paradigm for Human-Robot Interaction Research.
Frontiers in Robotics and AI 8
Winkle, Katie, Ryan Blake Jackson, Gaspar Isaac Melsion, Drazen Brscic, Iolanda Leite & Tom Williams
2022.
In 2022 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI),
► pp. 120 ff.
Yamada, Sachie, Takayuki Kanda & Kanako Tomita
2020.
In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction,
► pp. 191 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 january 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.