An Escalating Model of Children’s Robot Abuse

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We reveal the process of children engaging in such serious abuse as kicking and punching robots. In study 1, we established a process model of robot abuse and used a qualitative analysis method specialized for time-series data: the Trajectory Equifinality Model (TEM). With the TEM method, we analyzed interactions from nine children who committed serious robot abuse from which we developed a multi-stage model: the abuse escalation model. The model has four stages: approach, mild abuse, physical abuse, and escalation. For each stage, we identified social guides (SGs), which are influencing events that fuel the stage. In study 2, we conducted a quantitative analysis to examine the effect of these SGs. We analyzed 12 hours of data that included 522 children who visited the observed area nearby the robot, coded their behaviors, and statistically tested whether the presence of each SG promoted the stage. Our analysis confirmed the correlations of four SGs and children’s behaviors: the presence of other children related a new child to approach the robot (SG1); mild abuse by another child related a child to do mild abuse (SG2); physical abuse by another child related a child to conduct physical abuse (SG3); and encouragement from others related a child to escalate the abuse (SG5).