Consider some experiments from my lab at Yale, where my colleagues and I have been exploring how such effects might play out. In one, we directed small groups of people to work with humanoid robots to lay railroad tracks in a virtual world. Each group consisted of three people and a little blue-and-white robot sitting around a square table, working on tablets. The robot was programmed to make occasional errors—and to acknowledge them: “Sorry, guys, I made the mistake this round,” it declared perkily. “I know it may be hard to believe, but robots make mistakes too.”
As it turned out, this clumsy, confessional robot helped the groups perform better—by improving communication among the humans. They became more relaxed and conversational, consoling group members who stumbled and laughing together more often. Compared with the control groups, whose robot made only bland statements, the groups with a confessional robot were better able to collaborate.
In another, virtual experiment, we divided 4,000 human subjects into groups of about 20, and assigned each individual “friends” within the group; these friendships formed a social network. The groups were then assigned a task: Each person had to choose one of three colors, but no individual’s color could match that of his or her assigned friends within the social network. Unknown to the subjects, some groups contained a few bots that were programmed to occasionally make mistakes. Humans who were directly connected to these bots grew more flexible, and tended to avoid getting stuck in a solution that might work for a given individual but not for the group as a whole. What’s more, the resulting flexibility spread throughout the network, reaching even people who were not directly connected to the bots.
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