Trust in Robots: Aligning with Misaligned actions

Abstract

This article examines cases from experiments on human–robot interaction in an educational context. Drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, I analyze interactions structured around the sequential organization of [question]–[answer]–[evaluation] to explore the ascribability of “trust” as a routine foundation of sociality. The analysis focuses on a recurring phenomenon in which participants deal with audio input issues and respond to the robot's misaligned actions by laughing at the robot's behavior and repeating their response. I observe how, in human–robot interaction, robots enact actions programmed to resemble human interactional competence and how the participants align with the misaligned actions while managing the activities that the robots initiate. Moreover, I demonstrate that participants treat the fragility of this resemblance as a basis for determining the robot's trust‐ability.