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Lab Measures and Theories

Instruments and theoretical frameworks developed or used in our research, with citations.

Measure

A common social distance scale for robots and humans

Please see the paper for scoring instructions and scale properties.

Banks, J., & Edwards, A. (2019). A common social distance scale for robots and humans. 2019 28th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), New Delhi, India, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN46459.2019.8956316

The social distance scale items from Banks and Edwards (2019)

Theory

The human-to-human interaction script

When people expect to meet a social robot for the first time, they tend to fall back on the script they know best: interaction with another person. Because that script is built around human partners, people often expect less from a robot. In our studies, people who expected to talk with a robot reported more uncertainty and expected less liking and social presence than people who expected to talk with another person.

Those first expectations are not fixed. Actually interacting with a social robot can change them, and later work applies the framework to how human people perceive AI to be in human-machine communication.

Key readings

Spence, P. R., Westerman, D., Edwards, C., & Edwards, A. (2014). Welcoming our robot overlords: Initial expectations about interaction with a robot. Communication Research Reports, 31, 272–280. https://doi.org/10.1080/08824096.2014.924337
Edwards, C., Edwards, A., Spence, P. R., & Westerman, D. (2016). Initial interaction expectations with robots: Testing the human-to-human interaction script. Communication Studies, 67(2), 227–238. https://doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2015.1121899 (Article of the Year Award)
Edwards, A., Edwards, C., Westerman, D., & Spence, P. R. (2019). Initial expectations, interactions, and beyond with social robots. Computers in Human Behavior, 90, 308–314. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.08.042
Westerman, D., Edwards, A., Edwards, C., Zhenyang, L., & Spence, P. R. (2020). I-It, I-Thou, I-Robot: The perceived humanness of AI in human-machine communication. Communication Studies, 71(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2020.1749683

Interpersonal impressions

A core battery of validated instruments we use to measure the impressions people form of humans, robots, and AI agents in social and communicative contexts.

Credibility: Perceived competence, caring, and trustworthiness of a communicator. (McCroskey & Teven, 1999) McCroskey, J. C., & Teven, J. J. (1999). Goodwill: A reexamination of the construct and its measurement. Communication Monographs, 66, 90–103. Scale items on James C. McCroskey's site for credibility
Interpersonal attraction: Social, task, and physical attraction toward an interactant. (McCroskey & McCain, 1974) McCroskey, J. C., & McCain, T. A. (1974). The measurement of interpersonal attraction. Speech Monographs, 41, 261–266. Scale items on James C. McCroskey's site for interpersonal attraction
Social presence: How real and salient a communicator seems in an interaction. (adapted from Walther & Bazarova, 2008) Six semantic differential items, as adapted in Edwards, Edwards, Spence, & Westerman (2016). Walther, J. B., & Bazarova, N. N. (2008). Validation and application of electronic propinquity theory to computer-mediated communication in groups. Communication Research, 35, 622–645. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650208321783