Common Ground in Dialogue with a Gendered Humanoid Robot

Research on human-human interaction shows that people estimate each others' knowledge to find where they have a common ground of understanding. They adapt their speech to this common ground. In particular, people explain themselves more to others when they have less common ground. We demonstrate that the same process can occur in human-robot interaction. In discussing dating, women participants explained dating norms for a woman more to a "male" robot than to a "female" robot, and men generally showed the opposite behavior. We discuss the development of the dialogue that produced common ground, and what our results imply for human-robot interfaces and interaction design.