When Your Partner is a Robot: Workers Show Less Willingness to Accept Challenging Tasks When the Robot Partner Seems More Human-like

The proliferation of human-robot teams in organizations raises a critical question: how does robot design influence individuals’ task motivation in collaborative settings? While anthropomorphism is widely advocated to improve human-robot interaction, this research reveals an unintended downside—it can undermine willingness to accept challenging tasks. Across four experiments (N = 1085), the current research finds that higher robotic anthropomorphism consistently reduces participants’ willingness to accept challenging tasks. It further establishes a critical boundary condition: this negative effect is significant only when the robot possesses high processing capacity (Study 3 & 4). Further, mediation analysis reveals that human-robot group identification underlies this effect (Study 4). These findings underscore the importance of strategically balancing anthropomorphism in robot design to optimize human-robot collaboration, offering practical implications for integrating robots into organizational teams.