Feeling Socially Excluded When Working With Robots

Abstract

Work is not just about money, but also about satisfying social needs. We examine processes of social inclusion and exclusion among human employees and robot employees. For our current study, we chose the restaurant industry as a contemporary use case where humans and robots work together as waiters. We assume that social exclusion from either human or robot colleagues will threaten people’s needs (i.e., belonging, control, meaningful existence, self-esteem) but will be interpreted differently depending on the excluding agent (i.e., human colleague or robot colleague). Assuming different attribution processes challenges the “Computers Are Social Actors” theory and could lead the rethinking human-robot interactions or even humans interacting with technology in general.