Social appropriateness for technology - can robots be polite?
What is it about?
What is socially appropriate? What factors play a role in how we think about the appropriateness of a behaviour? How do we even know what a "situation" is? We propose a five factor model that provides a multidisciplinary perspective on the notion of social appropriateness and its implementation potential into technical systems. We suggest that what is deemed appropriate in human-human interaction is not necessarily appropriate in human-machine interaction.
Why is it important?
Humans tend to unconsciously think of technical objects as agents and react to them similar to how they react to living beings. The question of how the appropriateness of a perceived behaviour is different if a machine or a human does something is important for technology designers, but also in everyday life for people using and interacting with technical objects.