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 children1. It also turns out that they can increase children's engagement in learning2.
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.
Konrad Maj, Ph.D., social psychologist, head of the HumanTech Center at the SWPS University
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.
Konrad Maj, Ph.D., social psychologist, head of the HumanTech Center at the SWPS University
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.
More information in research publication:
Konrad Maj, Ariadna Gołębicka, Zuzanna Siwińska, How children learn from robots: Educational implications of communicative style and gender in child–robot interaction, Computers & Education, Volume 239, 2025, 105445, ISSN 0360-1315, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2025.105445.
1 Serholt, S., Barendregt, W., Vasalou, A., Alves-Oliveira, P., Jones, A., & Paiva, A. (2016). The case of classroom robots: Teachers’ deliberations on the ethical tensions. AI & Society, 37(4), 613–631. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-016-0667-2.
2 Papadopoulos, I., Lazzarino, R., Miah, S., Weaver, T., Thomas, B., & Koulouglioti, C. (2020). A systematic review of the literature regarding socially assistive robots in pre-tertiary education. Computers & Education, 155, 103924. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.103924.