It turns out that people's concentration ability is improved even if it is monitored by an intimidating robot

If someone is standing behind the work, the tension increases and there are many people who have experience of increasing concentration more than usual. Research has revealed that its effect occurs not only in humans but also when a robot that stands a little intimidating attitude is standing.

Not as bad as it seems: When the presence of a threatening humanoid robot improves human performance | Science Robotics
http://robotics.sciencemag.org/content/3/21/eaat 5843

Being watched by a cranky robot might help you focus | Science | AAAS
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/being-watched-cranky-robot-might-help-you-focus

This research was conducted by research teams of scientists from France and Switzerland. The influence of working while being seen in either "good robot" or "bad robot" is explained in the following movie.

Being watched by a cranky robot might help you focus - YouTube


If you work while being monitored by someone, you will have to concentrate on your work with a sense of being "seen". An experiment was conducted to see if the same thing happens when seen by robots.

In the experiment, 58 subjects participated, and the task of answering the color of the characters projected on the screen was given. At this time, it is necessary to answer "red" by looking at the letters written as "BLUE" in red as in the image below, but because the word means "blue", in the head Confusion will occur. This is called the stroop effect , a phenomenon that two pieces of information, the meaning of the character and the character color, interfere in the brain. In order to answer properly, it is necessary to have high concentration, so it is chosen as the subject of this experiment.

Also, when carrying out experiments, it seems that setting was done so that the robot's head and eyes are moved and the state that "it is really seen" is conveyed.

Prior to the experiment, subjects were given time to interact with the robot. The subjects ask questions to the robot, but at this time the robot was set in two modes. One is a robot set to answer friendly and positive content ......

The other side said that it was a robot that gives discomfort and answers negative content.

Subjects performed the given tasks while grasping the identity of the robot. Then the result was that the group of subjects seen in the robot showing an intimidating attitude had a shorter time to finish the task than the other group or the group who worked with only one person That's right. In a group of friendly friendly robots, it seems that work time was not shortened.

Previous studies showed that human beings' ability to concentrate improves if they are seen by militant persons.

The point to pay attention to in this research is where the result that the same thing can be said also in the case of a robot is revealed.

From now on, robots are expected to be used for nursing care and therapy of elderly people. In that case, it seems to be important to understand that unintended effects may affect human emotions and thinking.