Trash Talk Hurts Performance, Even When It Comes From a Robot

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have demonstrated that people who play a game with a robot suffer in performance when the robot criticizes them. Trash talking has a long and colorful history of flustering game opponents, and now researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have demonstrated that discouraging words can be perturbing even when uttered by a robot. The trash talk in the study was decidedly mild, with utterances such as "I have to say you are a terrible player," and "Over the course of the game your playing has become confused." Even so, people who played a game with the robot ― a commercially available humanoid robot known as Pepper ― performed worse when the robot discouraged them and better when the robot encouraged them. "This is one of the first studies of human-robot interaction in an environment where they are not cooperating."