Top

International Journal of Social Robotics

Published in:

01-03-2023 | Original research

Expectations of Robots’ Gender Appearances and Personal Factors: A Survey in Japan

Authors: Tatsuya Nomura, Tomohiro Suzuki

Published in: International Journal of Social Robotics | Issue 11/2023

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

Considering the fact that gender stereotypes may influence people’s attitudes and feelings toward gendered robots, the present research conducted two questionnaire survey studies in Japan to investigate the relationships between expectations of gender assignments to robots and personal factors such as gender stereotypes and occupations. Study I aimed to clarify whether gender conceptions were actually related to feelings toward robots, as well as what factors affect these relationships. The results revealed that individuals with stronger gender biases had more negative attitudes in regard to the social influence of robots, and that correlations between negative attitudes toward interactions with robots and gender conceptions were age-dependent. Study II aimed to investigate what type of gender appearance was expected for nursing care robots. The results suggested that expectations of gender appearances were influenced by the participants’ gender and relationships between their occupations and nursing care, as was anxiety regarding the robots. These results suggest that research on gender in human–robot interaction may promote the future realization of gender equality.

previous article The Making of Gendered Bodies in Human-Robot Interactions

next article Gendered Actions with a Genderless Robot: Gender Attribution to Humanoid Robots in Action

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 390 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Alesich S, Rigby M (2017) Gendered Robots: implications for our Humanoid Future. IEEE Technol Soc Mag 36(2):50–59CrossRef

Alexander E, Bank C, Jessica JJ, Hayes B, Scassellati B (2014) “Asking for help from a gendered robot,” In: Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci2014). July 23–26, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society; 2014: 2333–2338

Anthony LM, Clarke MC, Anderson SJ (2000) Technophobia and personality subtypes in a sample of south african university students. Comput Hum Behav 16:31–44CrossRef

Bernotat J, Eyssel F, Sachse JS (2021) The (fe)male Robot: how Robot body shape Impacts First Impressions and Trust towards Robots. Int J Soc Robot 13(4):477–489CrossRef

Chita-Tegmark M, Lohani M, Scheutz M (2019) Gender Effects in Perceptions of Robots and Humans with Varying Emotional Intelligence. In Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI’19), 230–238

Cohen J (1988) Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences, 2nd edn. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ

Cohen J (1992) A power primer. Psychol Bull 112:155–159CrossRef

De Angeli A, Brahnam S (2006) Sex Stereotypes and Conversational Agents. Ws. Gender and Interaction: Real and Virtual Women in a Male World 2006

Erebak S, Turgut T (2018) Negative Attitudes toward Robots Scale: Validity and Reliability of Turkish Version. Toros Üniversitesi İİSBF Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 5 (9), 407–418. Retrieved from https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/iisbf/issue/41627/486895

Eyssel F, Hegel F (2012) (S)he’s got the look: gender stereotyping of robots. J Appl Soc Psychol 42:2213–2230CrossRef

Field A (2005) Discovering statistics using SPSS, 2nd edn. Sage Publications, London

Ito Y (1997) The formative factors of gender conception and its relationship with a selection of gender roles in adolescents. Japanese J Educational Psychol 45:396–404CrossRef

Kraus M, Kraus J, Baumann M, Minker W (2018) Effects of Gender Stereotypes on Trust and Likability in Spoken Human-Robot Interaction. In: Proc. Eleventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2018)

Kuchenbrandt D, Häring M, Eichberg J, Eyssel F (2012) Keep an Eye on the Task! How gender typicality of tasks influence human-robot interactions. In: Proceeding of the International Conference Social Robotics, 448–457

Ladwig RCE, Ferstl C (2018) What’s in a name? An Online Survey on Gender Stereotyping of Humanoid Social Robots. In Proc. 4th Conference on Gender & IT, pp.67–69

Marchetti-Bowick M (2009) Is your Roomba Male or Female? The role of gender stereotypes and cultural norms in Robot Design. Intersect: The Stanford Journal of Science Technology and Society 2(1):90–103

Mizumoto A, Takeuchi O (2008) Basics and Considerations for Reporting Effect Sizes. in Research Papers. Studies in English Language Teaching, 31: 57–66. (in Japanese)

NHK World-Japan (2018) Gender equality in Japan remains bottom”, Dec. 26, 2018. (https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/335/)

Nomura T (2014) Comparison on Negative Attitude toward Robots and Related Factors between Japan and the UK. In Proc. 5th ACM International Conference on Collaboration Across Boundaries (CABS): Culture, Distance and Technology, pp.87–90

Nomura T (2017) Robots and gender. Gend Genome 1(1):18–25CrossRef

Nomura T (2020) A possibility of inappropriate use of gender studies in human–robot Interaction. AI Soc 35:751–754CrossRef

Nomura T, Kanda T, Suzuki T, Kato K (2008) Prediction of Human Behavior in Human-Robot Interaction using psychological scales for anxiety and negative Attitudes toward Robots. IEEE Trans Robot 24(2):442–451CrossRef

Nomura T, Suzuki T (2022) Relationships between humans’ gender conception, expected gender appearances, and the Roles of Robots: a Survey in Japan. Int J Social Robot. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-022-00873-2CrossRef

Nomura T, Suzuki T, Kanda T, Kato K (2006) Measurement of negative Attitudes toward Robots. Interact Stud 7(3):437–454CrossRef

Nomura T, Suzuki T, Kanda T, Yamada S, Kato K (2011) Attitudes toward Robots and factors influencing them. In: Dautenhahn K, Saunders J (eds) New Frontiers in Human-Robot Interaction. John Benjamins Publishing, pp 73–88

Perugia G, Guidi S, Bicchi M, Parlangeli O (2022) The Shape of Our Bias: Perceived Age and Gender in the Humanoid Robots of the ABOT Database, In Proc. ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, pp.110–119

Phillips E, Zhao X, Ullman D, Malle BF (2018) What is human-like? decomposing robots’ human-like appearance using the anthropomorphic robot (abot) database, in Proc. ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, pp. 105–113

Pochwatko G, Giger J-C, Różańska-Walczu M, Świdrak J, Kukiełka K, Mozaryn J (2015) Polish Version of the negative attitude toward Robots Scale (NARS-PL). J Autom Mob Rob Intell Syst 9(3):65–72

Robertson J (2010) Gendering Humanoid Robots: Robo-Sexism in Japan. Body & Society 16:1–36CrossRef

Siegel M, Breazeal C, Norton MI (2009) “Persuasive robotics: the influence of robot gender on human behavior,” In: Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems, 2009 IROS 2009. October 10–15, 2009. St. Louis, MO. Piscataway, NJ:: IEEE: 2563–2568

Tabachnick BG, Fidell LS (2006) Using multivariate statistics (5th international ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon

Tay B, Jung Y, Park T (2014) When stereotypes meet robots: the doubleedge sword of robot gender and personality in human-robot interaction. Comput Hum Behav 38:75–84CrossRef

Weber J, Bath C (2007) Social’ Robots & ‘Emotional’ Software Agents: gendering processes and de-gendering strategies for ‘Technologies in the making. In: Zorn I, Maass S, Rommes E, Schirmer C, Schelhowe H (eds) Gender designs IT: construction and deconstruction of Information Society Technology. Springer, pp 53–63

Weiss A, Spiel K (2021) Should robots have a gender – Should they be gendered? Proc. RO-MAN 2021 Workshop on GENDERING ROBOTS: Ongoing (Re)configurations of Gender in Robotics, (2021). (https://sites.google.com/view/ro-man21-genr-workshop/proceedings)

Title: Expectations of Robots’ Gender Appearances and Personal Factors: A Survey in Japan
Authors: Tatsuya Nomura
Tomohiro Suzuki
Publication date: 01-03-2023
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: International Journal of Social Robotics / Issue 11/2023
Print ISSN: 1875-4791
Electronic ISSN: 1875-4805
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-023-00984-4

Springer Professional

Abstract

Please log in to get access to your license.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Technik"

Other articles of this Issue 11/2023

Robot’s Gendering Trouble: A Scoping Review of Gendering Humanoid Robots and Its Effects on HRI

Gendered Actions with a Genderless Robot: Gender Attribution to Humanoid Robots in Action

Towards a Socio-Legal Robotics: A Theoretical Framework on Norms and Adaptive Technologies

Editorial Special Issue Special Issue on GENDERING ROBOTS (GenR): Ongoing (Re)Configurations of Gender in Robotics

Accounting for Diversity in Robot Design, Testbeds, and Safety Standardization

A Kind Apart: The Limited Application of Human Race and Sex Stereotypes to a Humanoid Social Robot

Premium Partners