Moberg, Reilly2024-01-052024-01-052023-09https://hdl.handle.net/11299/259569University of Minnesota M.S. thesis. September 2023. Major: Computer Science. Advisor: Arshia Khan. 1 computer file (PDF); vii, 73 pages.Understanding the social and natural relationships that humans have with ad-vanced technology is an extremely important consideration in the design and develop- ment of humanoid social robots. By perceiving the social rules within human-human interaction and applying them to human-robot interaction, social influence can lead to participants being more willing and eager to interact with a robot, resulting in the robot being used to its full potential. By combining the work done by Reeves and Nass, 2006 studying the media equa- tion with the social rule of reciprocity (Cialdini, 2008), we suggest that when a robot completes a pregiving favor for a human participant, then the human participant will be influenced by the social rule of reciprocation to comply by the robot’s later request. A phasic, between-subjects experiment (N = 72) using facial electromyography (zygomatic and corrugator) was conducted to learn more about how the natural, hu- man behavior of reciprocation can be applied to human-robot interaction. Measured in this study is the user’s valence of emotions, the user’s willingness to reciprocate a favor, and the measure of compliance based on the number of raffle tickets purchased by the user at the robot’s request. The results suggest that the social rule of recipro- cation exists within human-robot interaction and that when a robot offers a pregiving favor to a person, then that person is more likely to comply with the robot’s later request. In concluding, we discuss theoretical contributions, limitations, and avenues for future research.enFacial ElectromyographyHuman-Robot InteractionMedia EquationPsychophysiologyReciprocityRoboticsThesis or Dissertation