Do anthropomorphic service robots affect people’s sense of security? On the sidelines of the reflection on the future of the labour market in LIS

Abstract

The problem addressed in the paper lies within the field of social robotics of media and social communication studies. The primary objective is to partially verify the occurrence of the phenomenon of the uncanny valley. It would occur in relation to anthropomorphic robots carrying out selected professions of high social respect. The second objective is to establish the level of a person’s sense of security depending on the type of services performed by the robots. The third purpose is to determine the correlation between various professional activities and anxiety of service recipients. The data was collected by means of a survey conducted on a target group of post-millennials by means of a questionnaire which assessed the images of anthropomorphic robots of varying degrees of similarity to humans who performed professions of high social prestige: university professor, physician, nurse, qualified worker, accountant, salesman. Some of the characteristics of the mentioned professions also feature a modern librarian, herein referred to as a librarian – an erudite of the digital era. The inference was carried out based on the distribution of marks and the Chi-squared independence test. The study indicates a premise that there exists the uncanny valley, and that there exists a relationship between the level of trust and confidence and the type of work the robot performs.