Does a friendly robot make you feel better As robots are taking a more prominent role in our daily lives, it becomes increasingly important to consider how their presence influences us. Several studies have investigated effects of robot behavior on the extent to which that robot is positively evaluated. Likewise, studies have shown that the emotions a robot shows tend to be contagious: a happy robot makes us feel happy as well. It is unknown, however, whether the affect that people experience while interacting with a robot also influences their evaluation of the robot. This study aims to discover whether peoplexe2x80x99s affective and evaluative responses to a social robot are related. Results show that affective responses and evaluations are related, and that these effects are strongest when a robot shows meaningful motions. These results are consistent with earlier findings in terms of how people evaluate social robots.

The Effect of Interaction and Design Participation on Teenagersxe2x80x99 Attitudes towards Social Robots Understanding peoplexe2x80x99s attitudes towards robots and how those attitudes are affected by exposure to robots is essential to the effective design and development of social robots. Although researchers have been studying attitudes towards robots among adults and even children for more than a decade, little has been explored assessing attitudes among teensxe2x80x93a highly vulnerable population that presents unique opportunities and challenges for social robots. Our work aims to close this gap. In this paper we present findings from several participatory robot interaction and design sessions with 136 teenagers who completed a modified version of the Negative Attitudes Towards Robots Scale (NARS) before participation in a robot interaction. Our data reveal that most teens are 1) highly optimistic about the helpfulness of robots, 2) do not feel nervous talking with a robot, but also 3) do not trust a robot with their data. Ninety teens also completed a postinteraction survey and reported a significant change in the motional attitudes subscale of the NARS. We discuss the implications of our findings on the design of social robots for teens.