The bionic blues: Robot rejection lowers self-esteem

Nash, Kyle; Lea, Johanna M.; Davies, Thomas; Yogeeswaran, Kumar (2018). The bionic blues: Robot rejection lowers self-esteem. Computers in human behavior, 78, pp. 59-63. Elsevier 10.1016/j.chb.2017.09.018

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Humans can fulfill their social needs with fictional and non-living entities that act as social surrogates. Though recent research demonstrates that social surrogates have beneficial effects on the individual similar to human relations, it is unclear whether surrogates can also cause similar harm to humans through social rejection. After playing a game of connect-4 with a human-sized robot, participants were informed by the robot that it would like to see them again (acceptance), would not like to see them again (rejection), or told nothing regarding a future interaction (control). Data revealed that social rejection from a robot significantly reduced self-esteem relative to receiving no-feedback and social acceptance (the latter two did not differ from each other). However, robot rejection had no impact on negative attitudes and opposition to the use of robots in everyday life. These findings demonstrate that social surrogates have the potential to cause psychological harm.

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