Robots are Always Social: Robotic Movements are Automatically Interpreted as Social Cues

Physical movement is a dominant element in robot behavior. We evaluate if robotic movements are automatically interpreted as social cues, even if the robot has no social role. 24 participants performed the Implicit Associations Test, classifying robotic gestures into direction categories ("to-front" or "to-back") and words into social categories (willingness or unwillingness for interaction). Our findings show that social interpretation of the robot's gestures is an automatic process. The implicit social interpretation influenced both classification tasks, and could not be avoided even when it decreased participant's performance. This effect is of importance for the HCI community as designers should consider, that even if a robot is not intended for social interaction (e.g. factory robot), people will not be able to avoid interpreting its movement as social cues. Interaction designers should leverage this phenomenon and consider the social interpretation that will be automatically associated with their robots' movement.