An experimental psychological perspective on social robotics

Why should an experimental psychologist bother entering a relatively novel field like social robotics and how could the scientific community in social robotics potentially gain from this? This paper highlights the theoretical and practical gains and challenges associated with an interdisciplinary approach when addressing current research questions in human-machine interaction, with a particular focus on social robotics. Three core issues are discussed from an experimental social psychological perspective: First, this paper focuses on the importance of a scientific, theory-driven approach to test causal relationships between key constructs of interest in the domain of human-machine interaction; second, it addresses the need for advancement in the realm of measurement, e.g., in terms of validity. To illustrate, this paper provides an overview of the author's own research in the domain of human-robot interaction in which we have tried to live up to the aforementioned desiderata. Finally, following common Research-Development practice, we argue for bridging the gap between foundational and applied research by testing the validity of the theoretical assumptions and the robustness of our technical platforms in real-world human-machine interaction settings.