The Social Role of Robots in the Future-Explorative Measurement of Hopes and Fears

With robot technology entering more and more our private lives, the resulting ethical impact on society gets into the focus of social robotics. The present research focuses on individuals and their hopes and objections related to the potential social roles of robots in the future: via an online questionnaire, 328 participants indicated their expectations as to when these social roles for robots will become reality (distance rating) as well as their affective judgement of these roles (valence rating). Results indicate that while judgements are overall rather negative, the negativity is associated with characteristics of the respective social role (social context, distance rating) as well as with characteristics of the participants (gender, age, professional background). The findings are discussed regarding their impact on future work, including the development of ethical guidelines for social robotics.