On sharing and caring: Investigating the effects of a robot's self-disclosure and question- asking on children's robot perceptions and child-robot relationship formation

Although scholars have focused on the role of self-disclosure in the context of child-robot interaction and relationship formation, little is known as to how the effects of a robot's self-disclosure vary by the information the robot shares. Moreover, the influence of a robot's question-asking on children's perception of, and relationship formation with the robot remains understudied. We therefore investigated experimentally, with a 2 × 2 between-subjects design, how children perceive and relate to a social robot when the robot engages in (personal) self-disclosure versus (factual) self-description and when the robot does or does not ask them questions. We collected self-report data from 293 children aged 7 to 10, who interacted with the Nao robot in a science museum. The robot's question-asking increased children's trust in the robot as well as their belief in its cognitive perspective-taking abilities. Self-disclosure, in contrast, decreased children's perception of the robot's capacity to adopt their affective perspective. Children's consideration of the robot as a social actor and a potential friend did not differ across conditions. A post-hoc analysis showed that the effect of question-asking on trust was mediated by children's perception of the robot's cognitive perspective-taking abilities. •A social robot's question-asking can increase children's trust in the robot.•A social robot question-asking can increase perceived cognitive perspective-taking.•A social robot's self-disclosure can decrease perceived affective perspective-taking.•Question-asking and self-disclosure did not affect closeness and social presence.•Question-asking affected trust through perceived cognitive perspective-taking.