Ffab—the form function attribution bias in human-robot interaction
Open accessAbstract
People seem to miscalibrate their expectations and interactions with a robot. When it comes to robot design, the anthropomorphism level of the robot form (appearance) has become an increasingly important variable to consider. It is argued here that people base their expectations and perceptions of a robot on its form and attribute functions which do not necessarily mirror the true functions of the robot. The term form function attribution bias (FFAB) refers to the cognitive bias which occurs when people are prone to perceptual errors, leading to a biased interpretation of a robot's functionality. We argue that rather than objectively perceiving the robot's functionalities, people take a cognitive shortcut using the information available to them through visual perception. FFAB intends to outline the implications the design of a robot has on the human predisposition to interact socially with robots. In this theoretical review, we examined the results of several studies suggesting an FFAB. We outline future directions of experimental paradigms and robot design implications.
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Human- versus Artificial Intelligence
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“…to characterize non-human artifacts that 3 Unless of course AI will be deliberately constrained or degraded to human-level functioning. super fi cially look similar to us as possessing human-like traits, emotions, and intentions, (e.g., Kiesler and Hinds, 2004; Fink, 2012; Haring et al., 2018).”
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- Authors
- Haring, K. S., Watanabe, K., Velonaki, M., Tossell, C. C., & Finomore, V.
- Affiliations
- United States Air Force Academy (US)
- Waseda University (JP)
- UNSW Sydney (AU)
- Venue
- IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems
- Published
- 2018-12
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 843-851
- ISSN
- 2379-8920 (ISSN-L)
- 2379-8939
- OpenAlex
- W2810522772
- Cited by
- 78
- References
- 82
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 8.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- Locations
- IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems (publishedVersion)
- UNSWorks (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- Air Force Research Laboratory
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- U.S. Department of Education
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › AI in Service Interactions
- Keywords
- human-robot interaction, anthropomorphism, robot appearance, cognitive biases, visual perception, social interaction with robots, robot design
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