Monetary-Incentive Competition Between Humans and Robots: Experimental Results

Abstract

Gill and Prowse (2012) conduct an experiment where an agent who is loss averse around her endogenous choice-acclimating expectations-based reference point is predicted to decrease effort with her rival’s effort (a “discouragement effect”). We adapt their human-human to a human-robot design: our subjects compete against a robot in a task that combines cognitive and motoric skills. By exogenously pre-programming the robot’s effort level we can switch from a sequential to a real-time competition. We find a similar discouragement effect, but a potentially weaker prize-size effect. We also examine subjects’ perceptions of and attitudes towards the robot and themselves, contributing to the literature on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

Keywords: Human-Robot Competition; Expectations-Based Reference-Dependent Preferences; Loss Aversion; Perceived Competence

JEL Classification: D84; D91; J22