Identifying Gender Differences in Information Processing Style, Self-efficacy, and Tinkering for Robot Tele-operation

As robots become more ubiquitous it is important to understand how different groups of people respond to possible ways of interacting with the robot. In this study, we focused on gender differences while users were tele-operating a humanoid robot that was physically co-located with them. We investigated three factors during the human-robot interaction (1) information processing strategy (2) self-efficacy and (3) tinkering or exploratory behavior. Experimental result show that the information on how to use the robot was processed comprehensively by the female participants whereas males processed them selectively $(\pmb{p} < \mathbf{0.001})$. Males were more confident when using the robot than females $(\pmb{p}=\mathbf{0.0002})$. Males tinkered more with the robot than females $(\pmb{p} = \mathbf{0.0021})$. Tinkering might have resulted in greater task success and lower task completion time for males. Similar to existing work on software interface usability, our results show the importance of accounting for gender differences when developing interfaces for interacting with robots.