Hypotheses that specific robot appearances would be trusted more in matching tasks (humanoids for teaching, task-oriented robots for instructions, soft robots for personal disclosure) were not confirmed¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q3
Currency · newest study 2026 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? The study's appearance-to-task matching hypotheses (H1.a–H1.c) were not supported by the data. → Anna-Maria Velentza 2026

Evidence¶

Anna-Maria Velentza 2026¶

Anna-Maria Velentza, Konstantina Nikou, Anne-Gwenn Bosser, Nikolaos Fachantidis. (2026). What Robots Do Matters More Than What They Look Like: Task Context Shapes Trust in Educational HRI. https://www.google.com/search?q=%22What+Robots+Do+Matters+More+Than+What+They+Look+Like%22 doi:10.1109/ro-man72286.2026.11714558

q3 · i? · causal · r2

In the N = 81 within-subjects experiment, participants had hypothesized higher trust for humanoids (especially NAO) in teaching, task-oriented robots (Pepper) in step-by-step instructions, and the soft robot Daisy in personal-information tasks; the article states these hypotheses "were not confirmed". No effect size is printed for this null finding.

"The hypotheses related to matching robot appearance to task based on each robot's external characteristics were not confirmed."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• The interaction between robot appearance and task on trust was only marginal, suggesting appearance may slightly modulate expectations without determining trust — related
• Task type strongly determines trust in educational robots, with highest trust for procedural instruction, moderate trust for teaching, and lowest trust when robots request personal information — related
• Trust evaluations were strongly and positively correlated across all robot–task combinations, suggesting trust in social robots may be a stable, generalized attitude — related
• Robot appearance showed no meaningful effect on trust: pairwise robot differences did not reach significance after Bonferroni adjustment — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• A conceptual framework paper reports, citing a meta-analysis (Roesler et al., 2021), that anthropomorphism benefits human-robot interaction with effects varying across task contexts and design implementations — related