She's better at this, he's better at that: gender role stereotypes in humanoid robots

A study was conducted, with 240 participants, to analyze whether gender role stereotypes used in interactions with humans are also called into play in interactions with humanoid robots,. In the analysis, conducted by means of an online questionnaire, the adequacy to perform 8 roles (4 stereotypically masculine and 4 feminine) by 8 humanoid robots (4 judged as more clearly feminine and 4 masculine) was assessed.Results showed that gender role stereotypes are activated for both genders, but men most strongly activate those pertaining to male roles. These stereotypes are also adopted in reference to humanoid robots, though robots are generally considered less suitable for performing female roles. Furthermore, an increased degree of similarity of robots to humans has a positive effect in assessing the appropriateness to perform female roles only for female robots. The same does not happen with male robots. These results suggest that male and female robots are not categorized in the same way. Robots are essentially perceived as male entities, while female robots are a sort of modification of male exemplars, a particularly relevant hypothesis for gender-sensitive design of humanoid robots