Drexel Study: Expressive Humanoid Robots Risk Harder Trust Collapses

CyberRobooo · x · 2026-08-04

A study from Drexel University explored how socially interactive humanoid robots alter human hormones and trust.

Participants interacted with two versions of the Pepper robot: one exhibiting rich body language like eye contact and gestures, and the other remaining expressionless. The expressive robot built trust much faster. However, once it started interrupting or offering illogical suggestions, that trust collapsed significantly harder, indicating lower human tolerance for errors in highly expressive machines.

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