This is a preprint. The original article is published in HRI '22: Proceedings of the 2022 ACM/IEEEInternational Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. Please cite the published version at https://doi.org/10.1109/HRI53351.2022.9889520

Better than Us: The Role of Implicit Self-Theories
in Determining Perceived Threat Responses in HRI
D. D. Allan

Andrew J. Vonasch

Christoph Bartneck

Human Interface Technology Lab NZ
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand
0000-0001-9859-7033

Department of Psychology
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand
0000-0002-2784-5420

Human Interface Technology Lab NZ
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand
0000-0003-4566-4815

Abstract—Robots that are capable of outperforming humanbeings on mental and physical tasks provoke perceptions of
threat. In this article we propose that implicit self-theory (corebeliefs about the malleability of self-attributes, such as intelligence) is a determinant of whether one person experiences threat
perception to a greater degree than another. We test for thispossibility in a novel experiment in which participants watcheda video of an apparently autonomous intelligent robot defeating
human quiz players in a general knowledge game. Following thevideo, participants received either social comparison feedback,improvement-oriented feedback, or no feedback, and were thengiven the opportunity to play against the robot. We show thatthose who adopt a malleable self-theory (incremental theorists)
are more likely to play against a robot after imagining losing toit, as well as exhibit more favorable responses and less identity
threats than entity theorists (those adopting a fixed self-theory).
Moreover, entity theorists (vs. incremental theorists) perceive
autonomous intelligent robots to be significantly more threatening(both in terms of realistic and identity threats). These findings
offer novel theoretical and practical implications, in addition toenriching the HRI literature by demonstrating that implicit selftheory is, in fact, an influential variable underpinning perceived
threat.
Index Terms—implicit self-theories, mindset, human–robot
interaction, social robotics, identity threat, realistic threat, perception, robot acceptanceI. I NTRODUCTION
Perceived threat also known as “threat perception,” is oneof the more popular research themes to emerge within thefield of HRI over the course of the last five years [e.g.,41, 112, 115, 74, 60, 54, 53]. The basic premise is asfollows: machines that are increasingly humanlike and/or
highly capable, simultaneously threaten human safety andresources (i.e., realistic threat), as well as human uniquenessand identity (i.e., identity threat). Several studies demonstrate
the broad impact of perceived threat in HRI. [41] for example,
found that high levels of similarity between social robots
and humans, negatively impacted human group identity. The
authors argued that similarity blurs category boundaries which,in consequence, undermines human uniqueness.
Yogeeswaran and colleagues [112] demonstrated, similarly,that a new generation of robots perceived to outperform
humans on a variety of physical and mental tasks increased
feelings of threat. This, according to the authors, is because
human beings view such robots as members of a highly

Fig. 1. The Baxter robot used in this experiment.

competent outgroup. Hence, these robots are considered to beplausible competition for resources and jobs, and, in addition,a threat to human identity and distinctiveness.
Correspondingly, in a study conducted by [115], participants
who watched videos of purportedly autonomous robots (i.e.,
robots capable of disregarding human commands), consideredrobots to be significantly more threatening (both in terms ofrealistic and identity threats) than those who were shown avideo of what appeared to be non-autonomous robots. What
this finding indicates, the authors argue, is that when humanbeings experience a sense of perceived loss and control overrobots, such robots are perceived as threatening.
Other avenues of research have largely buttressed thesefindings [e.g., 104, 53, 103, 54], particularly, Cha and hiscolleagues [15] have made a strong case that human-machine
intellectual comparisons induce perceived threats. In one study,
they showed that the defeat of human Go champion, Lee Sedol
by Google’s AlphaGo computer program threatened humandistinctiveness [15, Study 1]. They also discovered that human
intellectual comparison with machine intelligence adversely
affects people’s motivation towards intellectual tasks [15].
This finding is similar to that of [82], who found thatparticipants who viewed the Google DeepMind Challenge(AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol), experienced not only threats tohuman distinctiveness and resources, but increased feelingsof helplessness.

The growing research interest in perceived threat has givenrise to an important question: “what are the determinants ofthreat perception?” [94, p.630]. In attempting to answer thisquestion, it seems, [115] has theorized that identity threat, inparticular, “may, be universal and experienced by all people
since it concerns humankind uniqueness and distinctiveness asa whole” [115, p.53].
In this article, we argue that this is not necessarily the case.
More specifically, we suggest that perceptions of threat are notuniform for all people. Rather, we propose that an individual’s
implicit self-theory—underlying beliefs about whether selfattributes such as intellectual abilities are changeable or fixed[28, 32, 27]—could be an important determinant of perceived
threat. We postulate that an incremental theory (those who believe in the malleability of self-attributes) decreases—whereas
an entity theory (those who believe in the fixedness of selfattributes) increases—perceptions of threat. We test for thispossibility in a novel experiment in which participants watcheda video of an apparently intelligent robot defeating human
opponents in a general knowledge quiz game. Following thevideo, participants received either social comparison feedback,improvement-oriented feedback, or no feedback; they werethen given the opportunity to play against the robot.
Before elaborating further and explicating expected outcomes, we first summarize the relevant literature on implicit
self-theory and provide the rationale for our hypotheses. We
next report the findings of the abovementioned experiment. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications of our findings
are discussed.
II. T HEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND HYPOTHESES
A. Implicit Self-Theory
As mentioned above, implicit self-theory (henceforth, IST),
colloquially referred to as ‘mindset,’ pertains to one’s underlying core beliefs regarding the plasticity of self-attributes,
such as intelligence [35] and personality [29], among others[28]. ISTs exist on a continuum from the incremental theory,
which assumes that a particular self-attribute is malleable andsusceptible to change via effort, practice, and learning [32], tothe entity theory, which assumes that such self-attributes are
fixed and cannot be improved or changed [27].
A substantial and ever-increasing literature suggests thatthese opposing self-theories causally affect people’s judgments[29], motivation [14], and behavior [28]. Whilst a comprehensive examination of the large IST literature is beyond
the scope of this short article [but see 32, for review], six
characteristics warrant specific mention. First, ISTs are distinct
from familiar psychological theories such as the Big Five
Model of personality [see 102], regulatory focus theory, anddual-process models [see 73], self-efficacy [see, 21], perceived
control, and attribution style [see 97]. Second, the effects of
ISTs appear to manifest most strikingly under conditions ofdifficulty, or in situations involving setbacks [110]. Third, theoccurrence of each self-theory in a given population appears to
be roughly equal [14, 75]. Fourth, while considered reasonably
stable [35, 92] and able to be measured as a trait variable [66],

ISTs can be (and indeed frequently are) temporarily manipulated, using scientific articles [10, 51] and other experimental
stimuli [58]. Fifth, ISTs have been repeatedly shown to affecta vast array of self-attributes [27, 89] including, intelligence[11, 35, 92], personality [39, 18], morality [17, 55], 2017),
and emotions [61, 105, 22], as well as downstream variables
such as, evaluations of brands [83, 71], marketing messages[58, 113], technology [42, 101, 45], and social robots [3].
Finally, and perhaps not surprisingly given the above, ISTs
appear to compel people to experience a theory-consistentview of reality, though the influence of which, typicallyoccurs outside of awareness [27, 89]. Moving beyond thesecharacteristics, we next summarize three specific interrelatedlines of IST research that together constitute the basis for our
hypotheses.
B. Implicit Self-Theory, Goals, and Responses to Challenges
One hallmark of ISTs is that they predispose people toward
divergent goals [30, 37]. The incremental theory orients people
towards learning goals, which involve effort (e.g., masteringa challenging task), and the potential for skill acquisition[34, 31]. As a consequence, incremental theorists tend to
persist in the face of difficulty and attribute low performance to
low effort [58, 75]. While an incremental theory is motivatedtoward learning goals, an entity theory is characterized by afundamental propensity towards performance goals [36, 37],
in which they seek to obtain approval and positive judgmentsfrom others [29] through displays of supposedly inherent andfixed pre-existing competencies [11], and the avoidance offailure [51], even if this requires cheating, giving up, withdrawing effort, or blaming others to hide potential inaptitude[30, 75]. For the entity theorist, the exertion of effort isviewed as a sign of incompetence [43], because if one hashigh competence, high effort is unnecessary [77]. Likewise,poor performance is considered to be a reflection of low
ability or low intelligence [11, 52]. Nussbaum and Dweck [80]showed that entity and incremental theorists exhibit distinct
patterns of response following failure. In one set of studies,college students who worked on a difficult task on which
they inevitably failed, were given the option to examine thestrategies of others who had performed either better, worse,or the same as they had (i.e., upward or downward social
comparisons). Entity participants opted to view the strategiesof those who had performed comparatively worse than they
had. Incremental participants, however, viewed this as anopportunity to redress their performance by choosing to lookat the strategies of people who had exceeded their performance[80, Studies 1 and 2]. A follow-up study confirmed that entity
theorists felt better after defensively comparing themselves topoorer performers. Whereas incremental theorists felt better
confronting and addressing their poor performance in an effort
to improve on the task [80, Study 3]. This is consistent withprevious findings which have shown that incremental theorists
express greater optimism, resilience, and perseverance when
responding to challenges and setbacks [e.g., 70, 52]. Entity
theorists, by contrast, are sensitive to negative events [92, 37]

and respond with suboptimal stress mitigation strategies [25].
In the domain of HRI, Allan and colleagues [3] presented
initial evidence that entity theorists, relative to incremental
theorists, prefer a robot positioned as a personal servant (vs. acollaborative assistant). The reasons for this finding may stemin part from the entity theorists’ desire to feel superior to others[27]. Consistent with this nascent literature, we would expectthat in comparison to incremental theorists, entity theorists
with their desire to not appear incompetent, will avoid playing
against a winning intelligent robot. We would also expect
entity theorists to evaluate a robot more favorably in thepresence of social comparison feedback. Stated formally:
Hypothesis 1 (H1): Entity (vs. incremental) theorists will beless (vs. more) likely to play against the robot after
imagining losing to it.
Hypothesis 2 (H2): Entity theorists will evaluate the robot
in the social comparison condition more (vs. less)favorably than the robot in the improvement-oriented
and control conditions.
C. Implicit Self-Theory and Responses to Feedback
A substantial stream of IST research has found that ISTs
can arise from, and be reinforced by, significant others’ (e.g.,teachers, parents, and peers) feedback [46]. In one study [68],for example, university students with English as a second
language failed a challenging English test and were given
either ability-consoling feedback (e.g., “I’m sure you havegreat talent in other subjects.”), improvement-oriented feedback (e.g., “If you put in the work, you’ll be at the level ofproficiency that you want.”), or no feedback from a teacher.
Students who received ability-consoling feedback reasoned
that the teacher did not think they could improve and, inconsequence, expressed an unwillingness to retake the test.
Conversely, students who received the improvement-oriented
feedback perceived the teacher to believe in their potential.
According to Lou and Noels [68], the teacher’s feedback
strengthened and further increased students’ endorsement of
an incremental theory. Consistent with this notion, [4] recently
found that ISTs and robot-delivered feedback (praise, in thiscase), interactively influenced people’s evaluations of a social
robot after a challenging task. In particular, they showed that
entity theorists, compared to incremental theorists, evaluateda social robot as more intelligent and likable after it delivered
ability praise (e.g., “You must be smart at these questions.”)rather than effort praise (e.g., “You must have worked hard atthese questions.”) Moreover, incremental theorists, were unaffected by either praise type and evaluated the robot favorably
irrespective of the praise it delivered. Together, these findings
provide evidence of a matching effect between feedback andindividual IST [see also 19, 47, 59, 88, 100]. Accordingly,
we would expect incremental theorists, with their focus ondeveloping ability, would evaluate a robot more favorably inthe presence of feedback that emphasizes improvement. Statedformally:
Hypothesis 3 (H3): Incremental theorists will evaluate therobot in the improvement-oriented condition more (vs.

less) favorably than the robot in the social comparison
feedback and control conditions.
D. Implicit Self-Theory and Responses to Others
A well-established theme in the IST literature is that anindividual’s IST exerts a powerful influence on the attributions they make with respect to other people [34, 33, 38].
For instance, entity theorists have been found to make snap
judgments about the traits of others [17], even in the presenceof limited information [49]. In one set of studies, Yeager
and colleagues [111], for example, found that adolescentswith an entity theory interpreted ambiguous provocations
from (unknown) peers to be hostile in intent, which in turnlead them to express relatively violent desires for revenge.
Furthermore, individuals who hold entity theories, in comparison to those who hold incremental theories, are prone
to making stereotypical judgments [67, 85, 86]. [67] foundthat entity theorists endorsed extreme judgments on global
traits (i.e., bad-good, evil-virtuous) toward a range of target
groups (e.g., ethnic, occupational, and even fictitious groups).
Moreover, those endorsing an entity theory have been found to
display a significant increase in self-esteem when promoting
stereotypes [27]. Conversely, incremental theorists make fewer
trait attributions [86, 66] and rather base their perceptionsof people on situational and environmental factors [33, 34].
Of note is that stereotyping has long been identified as anintegral component in the formation of outgroup attributions[see 81, for review]. Recall also from Section I that outgroupattributions have been linked to threat perception. Additionally,and perhaps most pertinent to our discussion, is a study in thedomain of HRI, demonstrating that entity theorists, relative toincremental theorists, exhibit greater negative robot beliefs [3].
Notably, these findings fall in line with those of [115], which
has connected negative robot beliefs to realistic and identity
threats. Thus, we formulated the following hypotheses withregard to perceived threat:
Hypothesis 4 (H4): Incremental (vs. entity) theorists willrate robots in general as posing less (vs. more) identity
relevant threats.
Hypothesis 5 (H5): Entity (vs. incremental) theorists willrate robots in general as posing more (vs. less) realistic
threats.
III. M ETHOD
The experimental hypotheses and analysis plan were preregistered.1 All data were collected during August 2021.
The experimental protocol was reviewed and approved by
the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University ofCanterbury (HEC 2021/33).
A. Overview
We tested our hypotheses in an online human-subject experiment, which was administered through the Qualtrics online
platform. Participants were drawn from Amazon Mechanical
1 https://aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=/HY4 JJY.

B. Design
The experiment was a 2 (implicit self-theory: entity vs. incremental) ×3 (feedback: social comparison vs. improvementoriented vs. control) between-subjects factorial design.
C. Recruitment

Fig. 2. An on-the-spot screenshot from the video showing the Baxter robot
and a human player. Note. The individual pictured here has provided written
informed consent to publish their image alongside the manuscript.

Turk (MTurk). While conducting online studies of this nature,
has been well accepted [50] and increasingly recommended in
HRI research [e.g., 40], here, our primary motivation was toaccess a large global and diverse sample2 of participants [13].
The experiment was performed in four parts. First, we
experimentally primed participants’ ISTs, turning some toward
an incremental theory and others toward an entity theory. The
main justification for inducing ISTs, as opposed to measuring
them as chronic orientations, was based on the findings of [3],who showed that MTurk workers who self-selected to takepart in a study about robots, were prominently skewed in the
direction of the incremental theory. This observation is not
new and has been noted by other researchers from different
domains [see 49, 56, 99, 57], suggesting that entity theorists
might be less likely to participate in research studies thanincremental theorists. Correspondingly, we sought to obtaina more theory-balanced sample.
In the second part of the experiment, we exposed participants to a video of people playing against (and losingto) an ostensibly autonomous intelligent robot in a generalknowledge quiz game (see Fig. 2). It is worth mentioning here,that the use of video media featuring robots has been shown
repeatedly to be effective in engendering people’s experiencesof, and attitudes towards, autonomous robots [e.g., 8], andmost relevantly, perceived threats [see 112, 115].
In the third part of the experiment, participants were presented with either improvement-oriented, social comparison,or neutral feedback. As discussed in Section II-C, such feedback has consistently emerged as an interactive influence with
ISTs on both people’s responses to perceived failure [76], andjudgments of others [68].
The fourth part of the experiment involved administering
the dependent measures (described later in Section III-G).
2 Of course, like most research conducted during a pandemic, this was also
prompted by time and resource constraints, in combination with the myriad
potential challenges associated with running physical experiments at this time[see 40].

Participants were recruited through a task posted on the
MTurk website. The posted task made clear that this was a
study designed to survey people’s “impressions of an intelligent autonomous game-playing robot.” As well, prospective
participants were informed that they would be required to (1)read a short paragraph describing “our approach to intelligent
robots” and, (2) complete some questions associated with thatparagraph. Furthermore, respondents were informed that theywould be expected to watch a video of the robot and answer
questions related to that video. This pretense afforded us theopportunity to unobtrusively administer the theory inductions,as well as providing a plausible context in which an intelligent
robot could convincingly defeat human beings. Participation
was contingent on (a) having completed >50 surveys witha minimal HIT approval rate of 98% or greater, (b) being
located in either the USA, UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia,
or New Zealand, and (c) having no experience with robotics
and/or any expertise in AI (e.g., data science and machinelearning). It should be noted here, that both technical expertiseand experience with robotics, have been found consistently to
predict favorable responses toward, and acceptance of, social
robots [e.g., 23, 65, 26, 63, 107, 62, 96]. Thus, it seemed
reasonable to exclude such individuals as they may have
obscured our findings.
D. Participants
A total of 356 participants recruited through MTurk
agreed to participate in exchange for $1.00. Fifty participants (14.08%) who either answered the manipulation checkquestion incorrectly (e.g., “very nice,” “good and ehw,” “itwas awesome”), failed the attention check, or who asked fortheir data to be excluded, were omitted from the dataset prior
to analyses. The final sample consisted of 305 participants(173 male, 130 female, 2 with no gender reported), aged
18–29 (n=54), 30–39 (n=114), 40–49 (n=69), 50–59 (n=41),
and 60 and over (n=27). Most participants (56.1%) ranked
undergraduate education (some college education) as theirhighest level of educational attainment. While 26.2% held
postgraduate degrees and 17.7% had a high school education
alone. All participants provided consent prior to participation.
E. Procedure
Upon consent, participants were assigned randomly to readone of two articles, endorsing either an entity, or incremental
theory of intelligence.3 Afterwards, participants were asked
to briefly summarize their respective article, and complete
The Implicit Theories of Intelligence Scale [ITIS; 28], which
3 The full manipulation articles are freely available at the Open Science
Framework https://osf.io/t7f2j/.

served as a manipulation check4 (described later in Section
III-G). Participants were then instructed to watch a videoof a general knowledge quiz match, in which human quiz
players appeared to compete against an apparently intelligent
and autonomous robot (described below in Section III-F).
After viewing the video, participants were randomly assigned
to one of three feedback conditions: improvement-oriented
feedback, social comparison feedback, or neutral feedback (described below in Section III-F). Following the manipulation,
participants completed the dependent measures (described in
Section III-G), and provided their demographic details. Next,
participants were debriefed about the true objective and theexperimental rationale of the experiment, including the deception employed. Finally, participants were given an opportunity
to withdraw their data, thanked, and compensated with $1.00.
F. Materials
1) Video: The video was designed to fit the tradition ofreal-world human-machine competitions, such as IBM Watson’s Jeopardy! Challenge [16], and the Google DeepMind
Challenge Match between Lee Sedol and AlphaGo [64]. The
video lasted approximately seven and a half minutes andfeatured a Baxter Robot [44]. Baxter is a six foot threeinch tall, humanoid robot, built initially for the manufacturingsector (see Fig. 1). Consistent with prior work [78], we
designed custom eyes with a random eye blink, in addition topre-programming the robot with scripted responses, prior tofilming. A female American voice introduced the robot, andfollowing [112] emphasized that Baxter had been “shown tooutperform humans on both physical tasks, such as weightlifting and on mental tasks, such as chess and problem
solving.” Participants were then informed that what followed
were “highlights of an intelligence challenge that took place
between a Baxter Robot and players from a top university
quiz team” (who were, in fact, actors performing scripted
responses). Participants then watched as Baxter defeated thehuman players 4–0 in a best-of-four quiz game (see Fig. 3
for final scores). The quiz questions and answers were, inpart, derived from the official YouTube channel of the British
television quiz show The Chase.5 The video can be viewed
online.62) Feedback: On the basis of prior work in IST (discussed
in Section II-C), we manipulated feedback by emphasizing two different feedback types: improvement-oriented, andsocial comparison, which have observed interactive matching effects with individual self-theories (i.e., improvementoriented/incremental, social comparison/entity), After watching the video, participants were instructed to imagine thatthey had lost to the robot, in the same way the players in thevideo had. Participants then read that the robot had provided
feedback. Following [68], all participants were told that they
had not performed well: “You did not do well in the game.”
Subsequently, some received improvement-oriented feedback
4 This priming procedure is based on prior IST research [see 98, 55, 48, 4].
5 https://www.youtube.com/c/thechaseofficial/videos.
6 https://youtu.be/VYPr-XUibFA.

Fig. 3. A screenshot of the final scores of the game.

(e.g., “Like with many things, practice makes perfect. If you
put in the work, you’ll surely improve. Do you want to play me
again?”). Whereas others were exposed to social comparison
feedback (i.e., “Most humans are not naturally good at generalknowledge. However, you did 37% better than the otherhumans. Do you want to play me again?”). It might be useful
to point out that 37% was derived from [80], with the aimof provoking the entity theorists, into engaging in downward
social comparisons (i.e., to think of the people in the video
who had done relatively poorly), and thus defensively repair
their self-esteem. Finally, the control condition received no
additional feedback (“Do you want to play me again?”). The
feedback scripts were adapted somewhat from [68] to suit ourcontext.
G. Measures
1) Manipulation Check: The Implicit Theories of Intelligence Scale [ITIS; 28] was used as a manipulation checkfor participants’ ISTs. This method has been used extensively
elsewhere [see 66, 72, 91, 4]. The scale consists of 3 items
that measure incremental beliefs (e.g., “You have a certain
amount of intelligence, and you really can’t do much tochange it”) and 3 items that measure entity theory beliefs(e.g., “You can always greatly change how intelligent youare”). Participants indicated agreement on a 6-point Likert
scale (1=strongly disagree, 6=strongly agree). A final ISTscore was established by reverse scoring the incremental items
and calculating a mean ITS score for all six items, with higherscores indicating a greater incremental view of intelligence.
This measure demonstrated good internal consistency (α =0.89, M = 3.60, SD = 1.22).
2) Future Task Avoidance: A 5-item measure modified
from [68] assessed participants’ likelihood of playing against
the robot after imagining losing to it (e.g., “I would try to
avoid playing the robot again”). Participants indicated theiragreement using a 5-point Likert scale (1=not at all, 5=verymuch). This measure demonstrated good internal consistency
in our sample (α = 0.84, M = 3.23, SD = 1.08).
3) Robot Evaluation: Robot Evaluation was assessed using
the Robot Evaluation scale [3], a 3-item scale with variable 7-

Entity

EntityIncremental

Incremental

3.6

Robot Evaluation

Future Task Avoidance

Implicit Self-Theory

Implicit Self-Theory

3.9

3.3

3.0

5

4

3

2.7

Control

Improvement-Oriented

Social Comparison

Control

Improvement-Oriented

Social Comparison

Fig. 4. Future Task Avoidance means and 95% confidence intervals for theeffects of implicit self-theories and feedback.

Fig. 5. Robot Evaluation means and 95% confidence intervals for the effects
of implicit self-theories and feedback.

point Likert responses (1=very unfavorable/very bad/very negative, 7=very favorable/very good/very positive). The internalconsistency of this measure was excellent (α = 0.94, M =4.45, SD = 1.79).
4) Identity Threat: Identity threat was assessed with the5-item Identity Threat Measure [112]. Respondents indicatedagreement with items (e.g., “Technological advancements inthe area of robotics is threatening to human uniqueness”) on
a 7-point scale (1=strongly disagree, 7=strongly agree). Thismeasure demonstrated excellent internal consistency in our
sample (α = 0.93, M = 4.14, SD = 1.68).
5) Realistic Threat: Realistic threat was assessed withthe 5-item Realistic Threat Measure [112], Agreement withitems (e.g., “in the long run, robots pose a direct threat tohuman safety and wellbeing”) was indicated on a 7-point
scale (1-strongly disagree, 7=strongly agree). This measuredemonstrated good internal consistency (α = 0.80, M =4.47, SD = 1.28).

nor did we predict an interaction. No significant effect offeedback condition, (F (2, 299) = 0.07, p = .931), and no
significant interaction emerged (F (2, 299) = 0.86, p = .423).
Planned comparisons indicated that participants who wereprimed with entity theory demonstrated higher task avoidance(M = 3.42, SD = 1.00) than those primed with incremental theory (M = 3.06, SD = 1.12, t(299) = 3.00, p =0.003, d = 0.344, (95%CI[0.116, 0.572]). Consequently, H1
was supported (see Fig. 4).
3) Robot Evaluation (H2, H3): An additional 2 (implicit
self-theory) ×3 (feedback) between-subjects ANOVA was
performed to assess robot evaluation. Results revealed a significant main effect of IST (F (1, 299) = 62.87, p < .001),
but no main effect of feedback condition, (F (2, 299) =0.50, p = .606). However, a significant interaction between
IST and feedback condition was observed (F (2, 299) =4.25, p = .015). We subsequently conducted planned comparisons to examine the hypothesized differences between
conditions. As expected, planned comparison results forentity theorists revealed that robot evaluation was significantly higher in the social comparison condition (M=4.15,SD=1.50) than in the improvement-oriented condition(M = 3.32, SD = 1.93), t(299) = −2.50, p = 0.013, d =−.5136(95%CI[−.9196, −.1076]). However, robot evaluation
was only marginally higher in the social comparison condition
than in the control condition (M = 3.6, SD = 1.83), t =−1.741, p = 0.083, d = −0.3366(95%CI[−0.7181, 0.0449]).
Plannedcomparison
resultsforincremental
theorists, revealed that improvement-oriented feedback(M = 5.27, SD = 1.53) led to a nonsignificantly
more favorable robot evaluation than social comparison
feedback (M = 4.87, SD = 1.73), t(299) = 1.26, p =0.209, d = 0.2483, (95%CI[−0.1404, 0.6366]). Furthermore,no significant difference in robot evaluation was foundbetween the improvement-oriented condition and the control
condition (M = 5.50, SD = 1.15), t(299) = 0.264, p =0.792, d = 0.0521(95%CI[0.3358, 0.4399]). Given theseIV. R ESULTS
The dataset for this experiment is publicly available at theOpen Science Framework.7
A. Main Analyses
1) Manipulation Check: Results of an independent sample
t-test verified that participants who read the entity theory
article reported significantly higher (t(303) = 9.18, p < .001)
entity theory beliefs (M = 3.03) than those who read theincremental theory article (M = 4.16); thus, the manipulationof IST was successful. It is worth noting again, that lower
scores on the ITIS represent higher entity beliefs.
2) Future Task Avoidance (H1): We used a 2 (implicit selftheory) ×3 (feedback) between-subjects ANOVA on futuretask performance. As expected, results showed a significant
main effect for IST (F (1, 299) = 8.97, p = 0.003). We madeno predictions regarding the effect of feedback condition,
7 https://osf.io/rujge/.

Implicit Self-Theory
EntityIncremental

Identity Threat

5.0

4.5

4.0

3.5

noted. We made no predictions regarding a possible effect offeedback condition, nor did we predict an interaction. No significant effect of feedback condition (F (2, 299) = 0.61, p =.542), was observed, however an unpredicted interaction between IST and feedback emerged (F (2, 299)− = 4.74, p <.009). Planned comparisons showed that entity theorists perceived robots to pose significantly more threat to employment,
resources, and well-being (M = 4.78, SD = 1.14) thanincremental theorists (M = 4.19, SD = 1.35), t(299) =4.17, p < .001, d = 0.479(95%CI[0.250, 0.709]). This finding
supports H5 (see Fig. 7).
V. D ISCUSSION

Control

Improvement-Oriented

Social Comparison

Realistic Threat

In this research, we propose and find that a putatively
autonomous and intelligent robot that defeats human beings
in a general knowledge quiz game, does not evoke universal
Fig. 6. Identity Threat means and 95% confidence intervals for the effects ofperceptions of threat (i.e., threaten human resources, jobs, andimplicit self-theories and feedback.
safety, as well as threaten human identity or distinctiveness)
Implicit Self-Theory for every individual.
Specifically, we found that those embracing an incremental
EntityIncremental
theory are more likely to play against an intelligent robot after
imagining losing to it, thus supporting Hypothesis 1. Curiously
5.0
however, those embracing an entity theory (who are thought toexperience positive affect after comparing themselves to worse
performers following failure), did not evaluate the robot signif4.5
icantly more favorably in the social comparison condition thanin the control condition. As well, incremental theorists were
not influenced by feedback, in so much as they evaluated the
4.0
robot favorably regardless of the feedback they received. Thisfinding, in particular, does not appear to be entirely consistent
with the broader IST literature, linking improvement-oriented
Control
Improvement-Oriented
Social Comparison feedback to incremental theories [19, 47, 59, 88, 100] and thetendency to make positive judgments [i.e., 68], in consequence.
However, this finding is consistent with that of [4] who
Fig. 7. Realistic Threat means and 95% confidence intervals for the effects
recently showed that incremental theorists are unaffected byof implicit self-theories and feedback.
robot-delivered praise, and tend to respond more favorably tosocial robots in general [see also 3]. Consequently, Hypothesis
results, H2 was partially supported, and H3 was not supported 2 and Hypothesis 3 were not completely supported. That said,
both findings were generally in the predicted direction, which(see Fig. 5).
4) Identity Threat (H4): A 2 (implicit self-theory) ×3 might imply that a larger sample could confirm the expected(feedback) between-subjects ANOVA on identity threat was effects. Consistent with Hypothesis 4, however, the results
also conducted. As expected, a significant main effect was showed that compared to entity theorists, incremental theorists
observed for IST (F (1, 299) = 15.52, p < .001). We made no rated the robot as posing less identity relevant threats. We also
predictions regarding a possible effect of feedback condition, observed that entity theorists relative to incremental theorists
nor did we predict an interaction. No significant effect of rated the robot as presenting more realistic threats, in support
feedback condition, (F (2, 299) = 0.09, p = .918), and no of Hypothesis 5.
Unexpectedly, an unpredicted interaction was suggested
significant interaction emerged (F (2, 299) = 1.15, p = .318).
Planned comparisons revealed that incremental theorists per- between incremental theory and social comparison feedback
ceived robots to be significantly less threatening to human on realistic threat. Plausible reasons for this interaction are not
identity and uniqueness (M = 3.78, SD = 1.71) than entity evident, thereby necessitating further research to investigate
theorists (M = 4.53, SD = 1.58), t(299) = 3.94, p < this finding and to tease out possible explanations.
Most importantly however, these findings (particularly, the.001, d = 0.452(95%CI[0.224, 0.681]). This result supports
results of Hypotheses 4 and 5) expand the literature on
H4 (see Fig. 6).
5) Realistic Threat (H5): We conducted a similar ANOVA perceived threat in HRI. As described earlier, this line oftest on realistic threat. As expected, a significant effect for research finds that autonomous and intelligent robots and,
IST, on realistic threat (F (1, 299) = 17.428, p < .001), was more generally, “smart” machines incite threats to humanuniqueness, safety, and resources, which in turn, impedes
positive perceptions of, and willingness to, engage with suchtechnology [41, 112, 115, 74, 60, 54, 53]. We add to this literature by showing that IST is an important variable underpinning
perceived threat. In so doing we extend our understandingof the influence of ISTs in HRI. Emerging work has begun
to implicate ISTs as an important psychological factor inunderstanding aspects of HRI [3, 4]. Differences between
incremental and entity theorists are apparent in the extent
to which people experience robot anxiety [3], and robotdelivered-praise, in addition to perceived robot intelligence andlikeability [4].
Over and above their theoretical contributions, these findings may hold practical value for HRI designers and marketers.
Our results would suggest that a robot presented as intelligent
and capable of outperforming human beings could achieve
greater acceptance and use among incremental theorists (vs.
entity theorists). Whereas a robot that is presented as being
less intelligent and unlikely to outperform human beings could
increase the probability of acceptance among entity theorists,
for example.
A. Limitations and future work
The contribution of our work is qualified by certain limitations, which could be addressed in future research. First,
generalizations from our findings are obscured by the robotthat was used. In other words, a Baxter Robot, which as a
six foot three inch humanoid robot, cuts an imposing figure(see Fig. 1). Thus, the obvious question is whether the results
reported in this article, would be observed with different robot
types. Future work using alternative aesthetic robot forms (e.g.,mechanomorphic, android), can shed light on this question.
Crucially, more research is needed to determine whether
the effects noted here emerge following a real-life humanrobot interaction. Although recent work has found fairly strong
correlations of findings between online and in-person experiments [5], the imagining of robot delivered feedback following
a perceived loss, is hardly the same thing as receiving direct
feedback from a robot [50] in a real-life encounter (especiallyafter competing against and losing to it). Accordingly, as physical experiments become feasible again, it is important thatprospective research uses an in-person experimental design.
Future studies might also include a human control condition comparable to the robot condition in terms of generalknowledge and perceived intelligence (e.g., a professionalquizzer). Another limitation, although not within the scopeof our hypotheses, might be that we did not assess wellknown covariate influences that may interact or confoundthe interpretation of data [e.g., 3, 103, 109]. It is importantfor future studies to examine covariate influences to better
understand the significance of our findings.
Our decision to use the MTurk platform might also have
impeded our findings [114, 2]. While past research indicatesthat Mturk samples provide valid and reliable data [e.g., 9, 13],a recent stream of studies have reported many troubling trends
regarding samples drawn from MTurk [see 108, 84]. These

include, but are not limited to, participant carelessness [90],insufficient effort [69], and fraudulent responding [1]. Hence,
although we took measures to strengthen the integrity of ourdata, such as placing attention and validity checks in the survey[93, 20], it is still a possibility that some respondents may haveprovided dishonest or poor quality responses [6, 24]. Relatedly, the measures used were obtained via self-report, which
although theoretically substantiated and practically applicable,
may be vulnerable to bias [e.g., participants may provide selfenhancing responses; 87].
One other limitation is that participants were excluded ifthey had experience with robotics and AI, and/or did not
reside in an English-speaking country. This exclusion criterion limits the external validity of our findings. Therefore,
additional studies employing alternative samples, different
eligibility criteria, and more objective measures [e.g., useof an electroencephalogram; 12] seems both warranted andpotentially beneficial.
Despite these limitations, the present findings open up
avenues for future work. One interesting area to be exploredis whether ISTs promote or reduce individuals’ proclivity
to exhibit aggressive behaviors towards robots [7, 79]. Ourfindings imply that an entity theory precipitates greater identity
and realistic threats in response to intelligent capable robots.
As noted, entity beliefs have been associated with greater
negative attitudes regarding robots [3], and shown to provoke
aggressive reactions to ambiguous provocations [111]. It seems
reasonable to propose, then, that entity theorists may beprone to acts of robot-directed aggression [95]. Contrastingly,
incremental theorists who tend to respond more positively torobots [3, 4] may be more likely to intervene when a robot isbeing mistreated or abused [106]. Of course, future researchis needed to empirically test these propositions.
VI. C ONCLUSION
The present findings indicate that significant individual
variability exists with respect to perceived threat, among those
exposed to an apparently intelligent quiz-playing robot (thatdefeats human beings). We show that some people (incremental theorists) are rather receptive to robots, that can both
physically and mentally outperform human beings. In contrast,
others (entity theorists) view such robots as threatening andthus rate them unfavorably. These findings support emerging
research indicating that IST serves as an important variable indetermining how human beings respond to robots.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank Jonathan Wiltshire forproviding diligent and reliable technical support during thisproject. The authors would also like to thank Rob Stowelland the University of Canterbury Video Production team, whohelped with filming—on relatively short notice. Thanks isdue, finally, to the anonymous reviewers and the HRI 2022
Program Committee for their helpful comments in revising
the manuscript. This work was supported by the HIT Lab NZ
and the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

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