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Working with robots can make humans put in less effort

Robots that do their job reliably can cause humans who work alongside them to be less diligent because of a phenomenon called social loafing

By Matthew Sparkes

18 October 2023

Humans and robots working together on an industrial assembly line

Humans and robots often work alongside each other to assemble products

agefotostock/Alamy

People tend to cut corners and allow trusted colleagues to pick up the slack when working as a team, in a phenomenon known as social loafing. Now researchers have found that the same thing happens when humans work with robots.

Dietlind Helene Cymek at the Technical University of Berlin in Germany and her colleagues designed an experiment to test whether humans would put in less effort when they think that their personal contribution to a task won’t be noticed.…

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