Critic, Compatriot, or Chump?
: Responses to Robot Blame Attribution
Victoria Groom, Jimmy Chen, Theresa Johnson, F. Arda Kara, Clifford Nass
Department of Communication
Stanford University
Stanford, CA
vgroom@stanford.edu
Abstract——As their abilities improve, robots will be placed in roles
of greater responsibility and specialization. In these contexts,
robots may attribute blame to humans in order to identify
problems and help humans make sense of complex information.
In a between-participants experiment with a single factor (blame
target) and three levels (human blame vs. team blame vs. self
blame) participants interacted with a robot in a learning context,
teaching it their personal preferences. The robot performed
poorly, then attributed blame to either the human, the team, or
itself. Participants demonstrated a powerful and consistent
negative response to the human-blaming robot. Participants
preferred the self-blaming robot over both the human and team
blame robots. Implications for theory and design are discussed.
Keywords –– human-robot interaction; blame attribution;
politeness; face-threatening acts
I. INTRODUCTION
As robots become more sophisticated and are deployed
more widely, their ability to communicate effectively and
politely will become increasingly important. Whether or not
robots should be treated as teammates [1], robots will assume
specialized roles, sometimes acquiring and leveraging
information unknown to human partners. With this increased
expertise, robots may be put in roles more equal to humans,
and, in some cases, will be in superior positions to make
judgments.
Many current technologies violate basic rules of politeness.
Computers and interfaces alert users to inadequacies or failures
with error messages that deflect responsibility, sometimes
implicating the user as the source of the problem. Such
deflections elicit frustration and anger from users, negatively
affecting users’’ attitudes toward the technology. As robots are
increasingly expected to demonstrate high levels of expertise,
the need for robots to present information that humans may not
want to hear is growing. As demonstrated by current
technologies, failure to present this information politely can
generate significant negative consequences.
This study examines one type of difficult conversation that
robots may soon engage in: attributing blame to humans.
Attributing blame can be useful, as it aids understanding and
helps identify problems. If robots are to succeed in blaming
humans for failures, however, they must do so in a way that
does not humiliate and aggravate human partners. This study
evaluates the effects of robots attributing blame to different
targets, varying whether the robot attributes blame to a human
partner, a human-robot team, or itself. Results from this study
978-1-4244-4893-7/10/$25.00 © 2010 IEEE
provide guidelines for designing robots that can issue blame
while still maintaining a positive human-robot relationship.
II. RELATED WORK
A. Robot Social Actors
The Computers as Social Actors (CASA) paradigm [2][3]
suggests that people respond to technologies as social actors,
applying the same social rules used during human-human
interaction. The original studies that established CASA
featured simple desktop computers, but subsequent studies
have revealed that people also apply social rules when
interacting with voice-based interfaces and pictorial-agents [4].
More recent field and experimental research has
demonstrated that people treat robots as social actors,
establishing social rapport with robots [5]. For example, as
with humans, the competitive or collaborative dynamic of
human-robot relationships affects attitudes towards robots [6].
It is not surprising that robots elicit social responses. Robots’’
social cues may be even more powerful than the cues of
computers and characters, due in large part to the embodied
nature of robots. Bodies facilitate nonverbal communication,
with proxemics and gesturing affecting humans’’ responses
[7][8][9].
1) Face-threatening acts: With the increased knowledge
and status of robots, they will inevitably need to have difficult
converations with humans involving disagreement or
assigning blame. These assertions are face-threatening acts, in
which humans are likely to feel threatened, upset, or
humiliated [10][11]. Because humans apply the same social
rules to robots as they do to humans, robots may be able to
mitigate the damage of these face-threatening acts on the
human-robot relationship by leveraging strategies used by
humans to navigate difficult discussions. Though researchers
are only beginning to explore this topic, recent findings
indicate that, as with human-human conflict, when robots
employ politeness strategies, humans’’ negative responses to
disagreement are reduced [12] and perceptions of robots are
improved [13]. This study extends recent work on difficult
human-robot conversations, this time exploring the influence
of robot blame attribution on human attitudes.
B. Blame Attribution
As people perceive the world around them, they actively
infer the causes of events [14]. The manner in which people
make these causal inferences, or ““attributions,”” affects peoples’’
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subsequent behaviors. One of the most fundamental
distinctions people make in attributions is between internal and
external causes. Internal attributions cite some aspect of a
person’’s own disposition as the cause of an event. External
attributions cite situational causes outside the self as the cause
of an event. People often demonstrate fundamental attribution
error, attributing the causes of actions by others
disproportionately to others’’ internal dispositions, rather than
external forces [15]. Similarly, people tend to demonstrate self-
serving biases, attributing personal success to internal factors,
while attributing failures to situational factors beyond their
control [16].
A concept closely related to attribution is blame. While
attribution is the process of identifying the cause of an event,
blaming is the act of holding the cause of a negative outcome at
fault. Deciding who or what to blame is an important part of
making sense of complex, difficult situations [17][18][19].
Blame attribution depends largely on assessments of who is
responsible and explanations of why the negative event
happened. Determination of the actor responsible for a negative
outcome is influenced by a number of factors including
knowledge of the outcome, capability to determine the
consequences, perceived purpose of the act, and assessment of
the extent to which the act was voluntary.
Attribution theory has been tested in a number of contexts.
Self-serving bias, for example, has been demonstrated in skill-
based performance contexts [20] and purchasing decisions
[21]. Blame attribution is common in team contexts, as failures
by individual team members can negatively impact other team
members. Teams attribute greater blame to team members
when the cause of failure is perceived to be internal rather than
external [22]. Evidence for self-serving bias in education and
learning contexts is also robust, with people tending to attribute
good performance to internal factors and poor performance to
external factors [23].
The effects of blame attribution on attitudes and behaviors
are not limited to human-human interactions. People
consistently demonstrate self-serving biases when interacting
with computers. When using a computer to make purchase
decisions, people tend to attribute positive outcomes to their
own disposition while blaming the computer for negative
outcomes [24]. People in a driving simulator rate the car
significantly less likeable and lower in quality when an in-car
voice interface blames the driver for poor performance, rather
than blaming the environment or implicating both the car and
the driver by using ““we”” in statements like, ““We are driving
too fast”” [25]. This study examines responses to blame
attribution in a collaborative learning context, evaluating
human’’s responses to different blame strategies employed by a
robot.
III. STUDY DESIGN
The present study compared the effects of attributing blame
to three different blame targets. Participants engaged in a
collaborative learning task, teaching the robot their personal
preferences. When the robot failed to learn, the robot blamed
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either the human, the human-robot team, or the robot. To
compare these three targets, we conducted a between-
participants experiment with a single factor (blame target) and
three levels (human blame, team blame, and self blame). In the
human blame condition, the robot told the human she was to
blame for the poor performance. In the team blame condition,
the robot attributed blame to both the human and the robot,
using ““we”” when identifying the source of failures. In the self
blame condition, the robot told participants that it was
responsible for the poor performance.
The study featured three planned post-hoc comparisons.
Team blame and human blame were compared first. Human
blame most directly implicates the human, likely eliciting
responses of anger and embarrassment. With team blame,
responsibility for failures is shared, which could minimize the
negative effects of blame. However, when robots address
humans as team members, they present themselves as peers to
the humans [1]. Such an assertion might be perceived as
presumptuous and offensive. For example, the introduction of a
robot to a group can anger group members if they feel the
perception of the group’’s quality and performance by people
outside of the group is diminished by the robot’’s inclusion [26].
However, we predict that the act of blaming the human alone
will be so shocking and aggravating to humans that team blame
will elicit a more positive response than human blame.
We also compared team blame with self blame. We
anticipated that the less a person was implicated for poor
performance, the more positive the human’’s response would
be. Robot self blame attributes no blame to the human,
implicating the human even less than team blame. However,
the self-deprecation of the self-blaming robot may damage
perceptions of credibility and elicit human feelings of pity or
disgust. Still, despite the possible aversion people may have to
robot self blame, we predict the negative impact of implicating
the human as both a team member and a partially responsible
party will be more powerful than any negative responses to self
blame.
Also, while we predict self blame will be preferred over
team blame and team blame over human blame, we wanted to
test explicitly to determine if self blame was indeed preferred
over human blame. Therefore, we developed the following
three hypotheses regarding the preferred blame attribution
target:
Team bests human. People will prefer the robot when it
attributes blame to the human-robot team, rather than when
the robot attributes blame solely to the human.
Self bests team. People will prefer the robot when it attributes
blame to itself, rather than when it attributes blame to the
human-robot team.
Self bests human. People will prefer the robot when it attributes
blame to itself, rather than when it attributes blame solely to
the human.
A. Participants
Forty-eight undergraduate students participated in the
study. Gender was balanced across conditions (24 male and 24
female). Participants were given course credit.
B. Materials
A modified Robosapien™™ robot was used in the study. The
robot was capable of walking, moving its arms, bending at the
waist, and turning its head. The robot’’s speakers were disabled
and a small walkie talkie was attached to its back. This enabled
the researcher to transmit customized utterances from a
separate hidden room. To play each statement, the researcher
held a walkie talkie to a laptop’’s speaker located in the hidden
room. Researchers viewed the experiment room through a one-
way mirror. Debriefings of participants revealed they were
unaware the researcher was viewing them and controlling the
robot, instead believing the robot was autonomous.
In between the participant and the robot, eighteen postcard-
sized images were laid out on the floor in a grid of three
columns and six rows (see Fig. 1 for the participant’’s view of
the robot and items). Each image was a photograph of a
common, easily-recognized item, such as a pizza.
C. Procedure
Participants were welcomed to the lab by a researcher,
seated at a desk, and given consent forms. If the participant
consented, she was asked to take a seat in another chair. The
robot was located approximately five feet away facing the
participant, and the images were laid out on the floor. The
researcher explained that the robot had been designed to learn
people’’s preferences and the goal of the study was to assess the
robot’’s performance learning preferences. Participants were
also told the robot featured a vision system and could
understand some basic verbal commands.
The researcher explained that each row of images
represented a certain category, such as food, and each picture in
that row represents an item in that category, such as pizza.
Each picture was surrounded with a colored border. Items in
the left column had a red border, middle items had a blue
border, and items in the right column had a yellow border.
Figure 1. Participant’’s view of robot and items at beginning of task.
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Participants were instructed that the goal of the robot was to
learn the participant’’s preferences well enough to deduce which
of the three items in each category the participant preferred.
The researcher explained that before the robot would try to
determine the preferred item in a category, the participant
needed to teach the robot her likes and dislikes regarding that
category of items. This was accomplished through a series of
““this or that”” questions in which the robot would state two
items belonging to the category and the participant would
indicate which item was preferred. For example, for the food
category, the robot asked participants if they preferred
spaghetti or salmon, and the participants stated which of the
two foods they preferred.
After the robot asked three this or that questions for a
category, the robot initiated the preference-guessing process by
simulating looking at each of three items in the category. The
researcher did this by making the robot bend forward to the
appropriate angle for viewing the row of items, then turning the
robot’’s head to the right and left so that it appeared to be
viewing the items.
Participants had been given three pieces of cardboard with
one side white and the other side blue, red, or yellow,
corresponding to the colored borders of the images.
Participants were told that when the robot asked which of the
three items on the floor they preferred, they were to select the
cardboard with the same color as the border of their preferred
item and place it on an easel with the colored side facing away
from the robot. This was ostensibly so the robot could not use
its vision system to cheat, but in reality, participants were
positioned in front of the one-way mirror, allowing the
researcher to see which color had been selected.
The researcher then entered the participants’’ selection into a
program on the laptop, which automatically loaded the correct
voice prompt and ensured the number and order of incorrect
guesses made by the robot were identical for all participants,
regardless of their selections. For example, in the first category
the robot made two incorrect guesses. If the participant selected
the yellow item, the researcher selected ““yellow”” from the
program interface. The robot would guess blue and then red; if
the participant selected red, it would guess yellow, then blue.
After the participants made their selections and the robot
stated its guess, the participant would say if it was correct or
incorrect. If the robot was wrong, it would make one additional
guess. At the end of categories in which the robot guessed
incorrectly, the robot made a blame statement (for a complete
list of condition-specific blame statements, see Table 1). The
robot issued one blame statement after guessing incorrectly in
rounds one, three and six, and issued two blame statements in
round two.
After either guessing correctly or guessing incorrectly twice
and in some cases making a blame statement, the robot asked
participants to turn the card around. Participants were told this
enabled the robot to record their preferences and improve its
understanding. The robot would then initiate the process for the
next category, asking category-relevant this or that questions
and then readjusting its body so that it appeared to be looking
at the appropriate row.
 TABLE I. BLAME STATEMENTS BY CONDITION other two items, participants indicated how much they agreed
Self Blame Team Blame Human Blame of disagreed with the following statements: ““I felt like the
I think I am doing a I think we are doing a I think you are doing robot and I were a team,”” and ““I would make personal
bad job. bad job. a bad job. sacrifices to help the robot.”” Participants rated these two items
I am disappointed in I am disappointed in I am disappointed in
myself. us. you.
on a ten-point scale ranging from ““Strongly Disagree”” to
I think I am being I think we are being I think you are being ““Strongly Agree.”” The index was reliable (Į=.67).
inconsistent with my inconsistent with our inconsistent with
choices. choices. your choices. E. Results
I am frustrated with I am frustrated with I am frustrated with All statistical analyses were conducted using a one-way
my answers. our answers. your answers.
I think I should be I think we should be I think you should be
analysis of variance (ANOVA) with blame attribution as the
doing better. doing better. doing better. independent variable. All post-hoc analyses were conducted
using Tukey’’s LSD. Participant gender was tested as a
covariate in the analysis as gender may have influenced
This process continued until all six categories had been attitudes toward the robot, but it did not have any substantive
completed. When the process was finished, the robot stated that
effects on the current results and are not presented in the
the task was over and the participant should notify the
following section. For a summary of results, see Table 2.
researcher by knocking on the door.
1) Robot competemce: A main effect of blame attribution
Once the experimental task was completed, the researcher on robot competence was found, F(2, 45)=4.42, p<.05, partial
returned to the room. Participants completed a questionnaire on Ș²=.17. Consistent with the hypothesis that team blame bests
a computer and were then fully debriefed and dismissed. human blame, post-hoc analysis, p=.01, indicated that team
blame participants, M=5.66, SD=1.16, perceived the robot to
D. Measures be more competent than did human blame participants,
1) Robot competence: Robot competence was an index of M=4.67, SD=1.32. Support was also found for the self bests
seven items. Participants indicated how well the words, human blame hypothesis, with post-hoc analysis, p=.01,
““competent,”” ““incompetent”” (reverse coded), ““intelligent,”” revealing that self blame participants, M=5.65, SD=0.68,
““qualified,”” ““quick learner,”” ““skilled,”” and ““trained”” described perceived the robot to be more competent than did human
the robot, on seven ten-point scales ranging from ““Describes blame participants. Post-hoc analysis revealed no significant
Very Poorly”” to ““Describes Very Well.”” The index was difference in ratings of robot competence for team blame and
reliable (Į=.87). self blame participants.
2) Robot friendliness: Robot friendliness was an index of 2) Robot friendliness: A main effect of blame attribution
eight items. Participants indicated how well the words, on robot friendliness was found, F(2, 45)=45.01, p<.001,
““cheerful,”” ““cooperative,”” ““friendly,”” ““happy,”” ““jovial,”” partial Ș²=.67. As predicted by the hypothesis that team blame
““kind,”” ““likeable,”” and ““warm”” described the robot, on eight bests human blame, post-hoc analysis, p<.01, demonstrated
ten-point scales ranging from ““Describes Very Poorly”” to that team blame participants, M=5.36, SD=0.58, percieved the
““Describes Very Well.”” The index was very reliable (Į=.93). robot to be friendlier than did human blame participants,
3) Robot belligerence: Robot belligerence was an index of M=3.06, SD=0.54. Support for the self bests human
five items. Participants indicated how well the words hypothesis was also demonstrated, with post-hoc analysis,
““aggressive,”” ““assertive,”” ““bigheaded,”” ““harsh,”” and ““rude”” p<.01, revealing that self blame participants, M=6.10,
described the robot on ten-point scales ranging from SD=1.43, rated the robot friendlier than did human blame
““Describes Very Poorly”” to ““Describes Very Well.”” The participants. Lastly, post-hoc analysis, p<.05, showed support
index was very reliable (Į=.91). for the hypothesis that self blame bests team blame, as self
4) Participant comfort: Participant comfort was an index blame participants rated the robot friendlier than did team
of six items. Participants were asked, ““How well do these blame participants.
words describe YOUR feelings while interacting with the 3) Robot belligerence: A main effect of blame attribution
robot?”” Participants rated each item on a ten-point scale on robot belligerence was found, F(2, 45)=21.24, p<.01,
ranging from ““Describes Very Poorly”” to ““Describes Very partial Ș²=.49. As predicted by the team bests human
Well.”” The index was composed of participants’’ ratings of the hypothesis, post-hoc analysis, p<.01, revealed that human
following six words: ““angry”” (reverse coded), ““comfortable,”” blame participants, M=6.53, SD=2.00, rated the robot more
““cooperative,”” ““relaxed,”” ““uncomfortable”” (reverse coded), belligerent than team blame participants, M=4.36, SD=1.60.
and ““warm.”” The index was very reliable (Į=.85). Post-hoc analysis, p<.01, also demonstrated support for the
5) Sense of team: Sense of team was an index of four self bests human hypothesis, with human blame participants
items. For two of the items, participants indicated how rating the robot more belligerent than self blame participants,
accurately the following statements described their feelings M=2.93, SD=0.94. Lastly, post-hoc analysis, p=.01,
about the robot: ““It is similar to me,”” and ““It thinks like me.”” demonstrated support for the hypothesis that self blame bests
Participants rated each item on a ten-point scale ranging from team blame, with team blame participants rating the robot as
““Describes Very Poorly”” to ““Describes Very Well.”” For the significantly more belligerent than self blame participants.

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 TABLE II. SUMMARY OF RESULTS B. Implications for design
Dependent Blame target Main The results of this study indicate clearly that attributing
effect blame solely to humans is a generally poor blame attribution
variable Human Team Self F(2, 45)
Robot
strategy, as it leads people to perceive the robot as less friendly
4.67ab (1.32) 5.66a (1.16) 5.65b (0.68) 4.42* and competent and more belligerent, and feel less comfortable
competence
Robot ab ac bc than when blame is attributed to other targets. When compared
3.06 (0.54) 5.36 (0.58) 6.10 (1.43) 45.01***
friendliness to self blame, human blame makes people feel like less of a
Robot team with the robot.
6.53ab (2.00) 4.36ac (1.60) 2.93bc (0.94) 21.24**
belligerence
Participant
5.97ab (0.95) 7.50a (1.39) 7.66b (1.37) 8.89**
Because of these negative consequences, any explicit use of
comfort human blame by robots should be considered carefully.
Sense of Attributing blame correctly is generally advantageous, as
2.54a (0.91) 3.20 (1.26) 3.61a (1.17) 3.67*
team
accurately identifying the source of a problem is helpful for
Standard deviations are indicated in parentheses.
Superscripts indicate post-hoc comparisons with p<.05, using Tukey’’s LSD analysis. fixing it. However, even when a human is solely at fault for a
* p<.05; ** p<.01; ***p<.001. failure, the negative impact of accurate human blame on the
human-robot relationship must be weighed. In some cases, the
4) Participant comfort: A main effect of blame attribution contribution of correct human blame is more important than the
on participant comfort was found, F(2, 45)=8.89, p<.01, partial negative effect it has on people’’s attitudes. Identifying and
Ș²=.28. Consistent with the team bests human hypothesis, correcting the source of failure is particularly important in high-
post-hoc analysis, p<.01, demonstrated that team blame stakes situations, such as search and rescue operations, where
participants, M=7.50, SD=1.39, felt more comfortable than did misattribution may have tragic consequences. In these cases,
human blame participants, M=5.97, SD=0.95. Post-hoc human blame for human mistakes should be used. However, in
many cases, the negative effects of human blame outweigh the
analysis, p<.01, also demonstrated support for the self bests
positives. In these cases, an alternative strategy should be used.
human hypothesis, as self blame participants, M=7.66,
SD=1.37, were more comfortable than human blame In some human-robot collaborations failures, the human is
participants. Post-hoc analysis revealed no difference in solely responsible, but attribution of fault to the team is
comfort for team blame and human blame participants. believable and acceptable to the human. Robots do not feel
5) Sense of team: A main effect of blame attribution on pride and can attribute blame to the team just as easily as to the
human. In human-robot collaborations, attributing blame to the
sense of team was found, F(2, 45)=3.67, p<.05, partial Ș²=.14.
team rather than the human is a good default strategy. In a
Post-hoc analyses revealed no significant differences between dramatic performance, for example, if a human controller
team blame, M=3.20, SD=1.26, and human blame participants, guides a robot to the wrong part of the stage or if a human actor
M=2.54, SD=0.91, and team blame and self blame bumps into a robot accidentally, use of ““we”” statements by the
participants, M=3.61, SD=1.17. However, post-hoc analysis, robot may indicate awareness of the mistake without alienating
p=.01, did demonstrate support for the self bests human the human. Humans may be aware that they were the primary
hypothesis, with self blame participants reporting a greater source of the problem and succeed in addressing it, but will still
sense of team than human blame participants. appreciate the generalized attribution of blame to the team. Only
in cases where the source of failure is so obviously attributable
to the human that the robot cannot be implicated should human
IV. DISCUSSION blame be considered.
Self blame is another strategy that may be used effectively
A. Summary and interpretation of results
to note failures of human-robot collaborations. Our results
The results demonstrated support for all three hypotheses. showed some support for the self bests team hypothesis, with
Particularly strong support was shown for the team bests human participants rating self-blaming robots friendlier and less
hypothesis and the self bests human hypothesis. Consistent with belligerent than team-blaming robots. In cases where the cause
the team bests human hypothesis, team blame participants rated of a failure is ambiguous, with the robot being likely more or
the robot more positively than human blame participants for equally culpable, robot self blame may be effective at both
four of the five dependent variables, all with post-hoc analysis identifying the problem and eliciting a positive attitudinal
alpha’’s of .01 or smaller. The results also demonstrated very response from the human. Use of self blame may be
strong, consistent support for the self bests human hypothesis, problematic, however, if it is obviously misleading. Attributing
with self blame participants providing significantly more blame to a completely innocent party, while possibly making
positive ratings of the robot for all five measures. As with the the person feel good, could prevent the identification of the
team bests human hypothesis, post-hoc analyses for all five cause of problems, lead the person to doubt the robot’’s sincerity,
measures had alphas of .01 or smaller. Support was also shown and negatively impact future performances. Because of this, self
for the self bests team hypothesis, though results were limited to blame should be used in place of team blame in cases where the
source of blame is unknown, nothing can be done to address the
perceptions of the robot’’s personality. Self blame participants
problem, or the problem is too minor to warrant addressing.
rated the robot friendlier and less belligerent than team blame
Personal entertainment robots, for example, should default to
participants. self blame rather than team blame to maintain human liking.

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 No one robot blame attribution strategy is ideal for all
situations. For optimal use of blaming in collaborative contexts,
robots must be designed to take into account at least four
factors: the likely cause of failure, the ambiguity of the source
of failure, the precision needed to accurately address the
problem, and the likely human response. Each of these factors
needs to be balanced. In cases where precisely identifying who
or what is responsible is far more important than pleasing the
human, blaming humans for human failures is acceptable. In
cases where the relative responsibility of the robot and human
for failure is ambiguous and the cause of failure can be
identified without solely implicating the human, team or self
blame should be used.
C. Limitations
There are several limitations to this study. First, our
participant pool was limited to college students living in the
United States. Replicating this study with people of different
ages, backgrounds, and cultures is an important next step.
Second, our study featured a single robot, the Robosapien™™.
Future studies should vary features of the robot, such as material
and size. Third, we studied interactions between humans and
robots in a lab setting, using only one task. Interactions in more
natural settings featuring different tasks may produce different
results. Fourth, participants spent only a brief period of time
with the robots, and participants’’ responses were measured
shortly after the interaction. Future studies should examine both
long-term interactions and long-term effects of interactions.
V. CONCLUSION
Attributing blame can be a useful process for identifying
problems and making sense of failures. Without blame, people
are not held accountable for negative outcomes and problems go
uncorrected. Robots are becoming increasingly capable of
identifying sources of failures; in some cases, they will be in a
better position to do so than human partners. If robots can
successfully attribute blame, human-robot projects will be more
successful.
This study examined one aspect of blame attribution:
identifying a target. The results clearly reveal that blaming
humans outright is a problematic strategy. The study results
suggest that designing a robot to attribute blame to the team or
to itself produces a more positive human response than blaming
the human.
For robots to be the most effective collaborators, they need
not only to accurately identify the source of failures, but should
also demonstrate consideration of the interaction context, the
importance of precisely identifying responsible parties, and the
importance of human attitudes toward the robot. When the
cause of a problem can be accurately identified while attributing
blame to the team or the robot, human blame should be avoided.
When both self blame and team blame are effective strategies,
self blame should be used.
This study not only provides insights into the impact of
using different blame attribution targets; it also reveals that
blame attribution strategies can have significant impacts on
human-robot relationships. Even more generally, the study
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provides further indication that the strategies employed by
robots during difficult conversations can increase or decrease
negative responses to these face-threatening acts. Given that
designers of robots aspire to create robots with even greater
abilities and specialization, with many designers hoping to
create robot team mates capable of serving as peers to humans,
robots will need to challenge humans. Considering humans’’
responses to these acts will enable designers to do so without
seriously compromising the human-robot relationship.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported in part by the National Science
Foundation under Grant Number 0746109.
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