# When Would You Trust a Robot? A Study on Trust and Theory of Mind in Human-Robot Interactions

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.10819 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.10819/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 26 Jan 2021.

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [The Challenges and Opportunities of Human-Centered AI for Trustworthy Robots and Autonomous Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.04408/) (2021)
- [Steps Towards Satisficing Distributed Dynamic Team Trust](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.05378/) (2023)
- [The role of haptic communication in dyadic collaborative object manipulation tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01287/) (2022)
- [Enhancing Robot Assistive Behaviour with Reinforcement Learning and Theory of Mind](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.07003/) (2024)
- [Theory of Mind for Explainable Human-Robot Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.23482/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Trust is a critical issue in Human Robot Interactions as it is the core of human desire to accept and use a non human agent. Theory of Mind has been defined as the ability to understand the beliefs and intentions of others that may differ from one's own. Evidences in psychology and HRI suggest that trust and Theory of Mind are interconnected and interdependent concepts, as the decision to trust another agent must depend on our own representation of this entity's actions, beliefs and intentions. However, very few works take Theory of Mind of the robot into consideration while studying trust in HRI. In this paper, we investigated whether the exposure to the Theory of Mind abilities of a robot could affect humans' trust towards the robot. To this end, participants played a Price Game with a humanoid robot that was presented having either low level Theory of Mind or high level Theory of Mind. Specifically, the participants were asked to accept the price evaluations on common objects presented by the robot. The willingness of the participants to change their own price judgement of the objects (i.e., accept the price the robot suggested) was used as the main measurement of the trust towards the robot. Our experimental results showed that robots possessing a high level of Theory of Mind abilities were trusted more than the robots presented with low level Theory of Mind skills.