The Role of Eye Contact in Human-Robot-Interaction

Eye contact is integral to social interactions among humans, signaling attention, building up trust, and ultimately driving human decision-making. As technology is advancing and robots are becoming more human-like, the question arises whether they can gain human trust and ultimately shape human decisions by human-like behavior such as making eye contact. This is especially crucial for the finance industry, where trust plays a major role and so-called robo-advisors establish themselves as a new tool for digital asset management. This research paper investigates the function of an anthropomorphic cue (eye gaze) in the context of a virtual financial advisory setting while following a 2 (averted vs. direct eye gaze) x 3 (human vs. robot-humanlike vs. robot-machinelike) experimental design (N=2,976). The results show that robots’ eye gaze significantly increase peoples’ perception of anthropomorphism, trust and satisfaction in virtual financial advisory. No impact was found on investment behavior.