The presence of robots in schools is no longer surprising. How do elementary school children treat humanoid robots? Are they polite to them, and willing to attribute human-like qualities to them? Researchers from SWPS University have shown that in most cases, children treat robots politely, and younger children and girls are more likely to perceive them as possessing human-like qualities.
The fourth edition of the international HumanTech Summit, organized at SWPS by the HumanTech Center, took place in Warsaw on November 20-22, 2025. Interactions with robots were among the topics discussed during the event.
Social robots, ones that support people in everyday life, are increasingly finding roles in educational settings. We already know that robots and virtual assistants can support constructive educational outcomes and healthy social development in children. It also turns out that they can increase children's engagement in learning.
Robots in education can be programmed in a variety of ways. For example, they can adapt teaching methods to individual students' needs, boost students' motivation and engagement through fun, or provide immediate feedback. However, it is important to remember that interactions with robots also raise certain concerns, such as whether prolonged contact with them will negatively impact children's social behaviour, emphasises Konrad Maj, PhD, first author of the study, a social psychologist and head of the HumanTech Center for Social and Technological Innovation.
It is therefore important to understand how children interact with them and in what situations interactions with robots are most beneficial. This is the focus of researchers from SWPS University: Konrad Maj, Ariadna Gołębicka, and Zuzanna Siwińska in a new study described in the paper "How children learn from robots: Educational implications of communicative style and gender in child–robot interaction”, published in Computers & Education.
How do children react to humanoid robots?
In the study, the researchers used a 120-centimeter tall humanoid robot Pepper (created by SoftBank Robotics) with a child-like appearance. Designed for social engagement, the device is equipped with sensors, cameras, and microphones. These features enable Pepper to recognize speech, gestures, and some emotional cues. The study participants included 251 children aged 7-12.
The researchers considered two aspects: the robot's communicative style toward humans (polite or commanding) and its "gender" (female or male), which they determined by giving the robot a name (Adam or Ada). They chose these variables because they directly influence how children interpret the robot’s intentions, warmth, and authority, which affects both engagement and academic performance. This could be important in the future design of social robots.
The researchers wondered, among other things, whether children treated politely by a robot would also be polite to it. They also wanted to find out whether younger children would be more inclined to anthropomorphise the robot (attribute human-like qualities to it) than older children, and whether girls would be more likely to do so than boys.
During the study, children were introduced to a robot that imitated animals for them, observed its reaction to an attempt to take its photo (either polite or with a firm message not to do so), to which they were instructed to respond. They then answered questions about Pepper. They were asked, for example, whether they thought the robot could be happy, whether it could dream or imagine things.
How will children imitate a robot that politely asks requests or commands?
It turned out that children interacting with a polite robot almost always responded to it politely. Those addressed by the robot in a commanding manner also responded politely in most cases, rather than imitating its authoritarian communication style, indicating that in this case, established social norms prevailed over imitation.
Younger children and girls were significantly more likely to anthropomorphise the robot. It also turned out that polite robots were more likely to be attributed human-like qualities than commanding ones, especially when their tone matched gender expectations. Anthropomorphisation was most likely to occur when the robot was programmed to be polite and female.
Our results suggest that social cues in interactions between children and robots in education are particularly important. Adapting the robot's communication style to children's developmental level and their social expectations can increase student engagement and potentially support positive learning outcomes, Maj believes.
He adds that as robots increasingly enter classrooms, understanding how children perceive and respond to them will be critical to ensuring that in the future they become effective learning partners.
HumanTech Summit 2025
Interactions with robots were among the topics of the international HumanTech Summit 2025 conference (November 20-22, 2025) that took place for the fourth time in Warsaw and online.
One of the speakers was Professor Emily Cross (ETH Zürich, Switzerland), an expert in the neurocognitive foundations of human-robot interaction. Her research focuses on how we learn from others, how embodied experiences (such as dance, movement, and interaction with robots) shape social perception, and how humans interact with social robots and artificial intelligence systems. Another speaker, Jessica M. Szczuka, PhD, from the University of Duisburg-Essen, investigates how digital technologies (artificial intelligence, chatbots, robots, VR) are transforming intimacy, sexuality, and interpersonal relationships, with a particular focus on synthetic relationships and the ethics of digitalized intimacy.
Peng Liu, PhD, (Zhejiang University, China) also attended the conference. His research focuses on machine psychology and human-AI collaboration, particularly in the context of automated vehicles, decision support systems, and generative AI.
At the HumanTech Summit 2025, experts discussed the social and psychological aspects of new technologies, including human-AI relations, artificial intelligence in the workplace, the impact of new technologies on employment policies and the labour market, and the psychological aspects of technology. The event was organized by the HumanTech Center for Social and Technological Innovation at the SWPS University.
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