A Theory of Social Agency for Human-Robot Interaction
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Motivated by inconsistent, underspecified, or otherwise problematic theories and usages of social agency in the HRI literature, and leveraging philosophical work on moral agency, we present a theory of social agency wherein a social agent (a thing with social agency) is any agent capable of social action at some level of abstraction. Like previous theorists, we conceptualize agency as determined by the criteria of interactivity, autonomy, and adaptability. We use the concept of face from politeness theory to define social action as any action that threatens or affirms the face of a social patient. With these definitions in mind, we specify and examine the levels of abstraction most relevant to HRI research, compare notions of social agency and the surrounding concepts at each, and suggest new conventions for discussing social agency in our field.
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Robot speech may lead users to attribute robots with intelligence, social agency, moral agency, and a uniquely potent combination of these factors.
“Because robot speech may lead users to attribute robots with intelligence [6, 14], social agency [28], moral agency [16, 52, 57], and the uniquely potent combination of these factors [27]”
From Robots for Social Justice (R4SJ): Toward a More Equitable Practice of Human-Robot Interaction (2024) · cites this paper as [28]
Section 2.4 says that the combination of social and moral agency gives language-capable robots a unique niche and potentially powerful influence over human norms. The Concluding Remarks discuss possible ascriptions of intelligence, but the paper does not describe the combination of intelligence, social agency, and moral agency as uniquely potent. (LLM, conf=0.82)
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Robots for Social Justice (R4SJ): Toward a More Equitable Practice of Human-Robot Interaction
Zhu, Y., Wen, R., & Williams, T. (2024) · Proceedings of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction · doi:10.1145/3610977.3634944 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
“Because robot speech may lead users to attribute robots with intelligence [6, 14], social agency [28], moral agency [16, 52, 57], and the uniquely potent combination of these factors [27], robots may be accepted as informed community members (although cp. [7]), granting them an outsized potential…”
BackgroundSelf-citation
- Authors
- Jackson, R. B., & Williams, T.
- Affiliations
- Colorado School of Mines (US)
- Corresponding author
- Jackson, Ryan Blake
- Venue
- Frontiers in Robotics and AI
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2021-08-13
- Volume
- 8
- Pages
- 687726-687726
- ISSN
- 2296-9144 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC8414548
- OpenAlex
- W3192253141
- Cited by
- 76
- References
- 46
- Citations by year
- 2026: 22 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 9.77
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Frontiers in Robotics and AI (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Speech and dialogue systems
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies
- Keywords
- social agency, human-robot interaction, moral agency, social action, face, politeness theory, interactivity, autonomy, adaptability, levels of abstraction
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