Record STMT-W76EE11Advisory

The Role of Perceived Moral Agency of a Humanoid Robot on the Willingness to Self-Disclose, Trustworthiness, Goodwill, and Liking

Report State lawGlobaladopted

This academic paper investigates the causal influence of a robot's moral versus immoral behavior across four experiments involving text or video vignettes. The authors explore how moral transgressions such as cheating or physical harm impact the robot's perceived trustworthiness, goodwill, likeability, and the human's willingness to self-disclose. Results indicate that immoral robot behavior consistently leads to reduced perceived trustworthiness and goodwill, while effects on likeability and self-disclosure vary by severity and presentation medium.

Summary and content fields are drawn from the document text and are pending editorial review.

Who issued it

Bielefeld UniversityAcademic · DE

Lead issuer

SpringerIndustry

Publisher

Legal forceAdvisory

Under whose authorityState law

Judged fromfull text

Who it governs

Researchers and academicsGeneral publicAI developers and providers

Researchers and developers in human-robot interaction studying user trust, social norms, and psychological responses to robot behavior.

Sectors

Research and science · social robotics research

What the document contains

What's covered

The paper investigates the effects of moral versus immoral robot behavior on human psychological evaluations, including trustworthiness, goodwill, likeability, mind perception, and willingness to self-disclose.

What's missing

The text does not provide regulatory compliance frameworks, legal standards, or technical implementation guidelines for programming robot morality.

Key takeaways

Immoral robot behavior consistently leads to lower perceived trustworthiness and goodwill across different experimental designs.
A robot's moral behavior has a reliable effect on its likeability when transgressions are clearly perceived.
Willingness to self-disclose toward a robot is typically not affected by minor transgressions like cheating, but can be reduced by severe physical harm shown via video vignettes.
Mind perception and consciousness ratings of robots are generally unaffected by their moral actions, unlike human agents.
Likeability fully mediates the relationship between perceived morality and the willingness to self-disclose for both robots and humans.

Principles it states

avoidance of physical and emotional sufferingfairness and cooperation

Outline

1. Introduction
2. Experiment 1
3. Experiment 2
4. Experiment 3
5. Experiment 4
6. General Discussion

Issued29 May 2026

Length16,948 words · 18 pages

FormatNot recorded

robot_morality trust self_disclosure human_robot_interaction ethics