From labs to living rooms: Evaluating humans’ perception of value-laden decisions made by humanoid robot

This study investigated human responses to value-laden decisions made by a humanoid robot, focusing on the values of privacy, freedom, and norms. Participants interacted with a humanoid robot, iCub, across 30 scenarios, each involving actions that varied in the degree to which they violated these values. The results revealed that participants were most likely to tolerate robot behaviors that infringed on freedom and least likely to agree to behaviors that violated norms, with privacy-related violations falling in between. Additionally, response times increased as the severity of value violation increased, suggesting greater cognitive effort when participants faced more severe ethical dilemmas. Text analysis of participants’ explanations for rejecting certain robot behaviors highlighted concerns over autonomy, data protection, and adherence to household norms. The most important result from our study is that people tend to prioritize social norms over other principles. Such prioritization of values needs to be taken into account in the design of value-aware AI systems. Overall, these findings shed light on our understanding of how humans perceive social robots in relation to value-awareness behaviors, linking behavioral and self-report indicators.