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Adults often worry about children for various reasons, but one major concern is their vulnerability to influence. Kids tend to be easily swayed by ideas that may seem harmless, like eating excessive amounts of candy or even dangerous things like laundry detergent.
Usually, peer pressure comes from fellow children. However, recent research indicates that we should also be cautious of children being influenced by groups of misguided robots.
A study published in Science Robotics and led by psychologist Anna-Lisa Vollmer of Bielefeld University in Germany examined 60 British adults between the ages of 18 and 69, along with 43 children aged 7 to 9, to explore the differences in social conformity between humans and robots. Participants were asked to assess images of lines of varying lengths, with a small group of humans or robots—acting as peer influencers—occasionally suggesting that two lines were the same length. While adults often agreed with their human peers' incorrect claims, they were less likely to follow the robots. So far, so good.
Children, however, responded differently. Sitting beside three small robots with eyes and movable limbs to give them a more human-like appearance, the kids agreed with the robots when they insisted the two lines on the screen were identical in length. They followed this suggestion 75% of the time.
It's unclear whether certain visual cues—a moving hand, a tilted head—played a role in the robots' success, or if the children simply viewed the robots as authority figures and instinctively trusted their guidance. Since children aged 7 to 9 are also particularly vulnerable to peer pressure, it's possible that the presence of other children would have had a similar influence.
The study comes at a time when increasingly more 'social' robots—used in settings like airports or for educational purposes—are becoming a part of everyday life. Researchers are continuing to explore how artificial intelligence affects human behavior, making it an ongoing area of interest.
