Unethical Robot Teammates: The Effects of Wrongdoer Identity and Entity Type on Whistleblowing and Intergroup Dynamics

Group identity is important in moral judgments and decisions. People generally favor others who belong to their own group and are more reluctant to report their group members’ wrongdoings to authorities. The current research extends this idea to examine the impact of intergroup relationship on moral judgments in the context of human-robot interaction (HRI). Our results showed that although neither group identity (ingroup or outgroup) nor agent type (human or robot) of the wrongdoers influenced the likelihood to report the wrongdoings, attitudes towards the wrongdoer depended on their group identity. The wrongdoers were evaluated more negatively when they were an ingroup instead of an outgroup member, be it human or robot. Moreover, human wrongdoers were ascribed lesser mental capacities than other humans. The current work highlights the interplay of intergroup dynamics and HRI in the moral domain, providing practical implications for building more cooperative human-robot teams.