Cheerful encouragement or careful listening: The dynamics of robot etiquette at Children's different developmental stages

Social robots employed for childcare must conform to the norms of human society if they are to help children acquire valuable interpersonal interaction skills through the inculcation of behavioral attributes such as politeness. A survey of working parents identified certain behavioral principles necessary for social robots used with children at varying stages of their social development. A set of politeness principles was derived from scholarly discussions on human courtesy to design appropriately polite social robots. In communicating courteously with children, social robots must be able to express intimacy (i.e., friendliness), respect opinions (i.e., agreeableness), and remember previous interactions (i.e., attentiveness). These principles should improve children's evaluation of the robots and enhance their perception of the machines' sociality, likability, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness. The results obtained from this study confirm that the priorities of etiquette must be modified according to the developmental stages of children. These outcomes offer practical implications for the design of social robots. •The present study proposes a set of politeness principles for social robots.•Robots' politeness can improve children's perception and evaluations of robots.•The priority of the principles varies with children's social developmental stages.