| Sumario: | Purpose Robots in eldercare are becoming increasingly prevalent. Studies show that, regardless of direct experience with such technology, potential users of robots have pre-existing attitudes and biases towards robots. Presently, we explore if there are significant differences between younger and older healthy participants on prevalence of negative attitudes towards robots (NARS; Nomura et al., 2006), anthropomorphism towards technology or natural object or on personality measures previously deemed important for willingness to interact with robots. Method data from 299 respondents were included (for full description see Damholdt et al., 2020). For the present publication the following measures were used: personality items from the IPIP NEO-120 inventory to assess personality (Johnson 2014), NARS (Nomura et al., 2006), and the AMPH (Damholdt et al., 2020). Results and Discussion the respondents were sub-divided into a young (n = 250; 18-59 years) and an older (n=49; 60-87 years) subgroup and compared using independent two-sided sample t-tests (see table 1). The results indicated that older participants had more negative attitudes towards robots simulating emotions, were less likely to anthropomorphize technology and scored higher on conscientiousness and lower on neuroticism compared to the younger participants. The personality traits did only show very small correlations (<.17) to the degree of negative attitudes towards robots within the two subgroups (not reported here). The remaining results did not yield statistically significant results. Thus, our results tentatively suggest that older participants may have more negative attitudes towards robots that simulate emotions.
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