The Study
Repairing Trust in Robots?: A Meta-analysis of HRI Trust Repair Studies with a No-Repair Condition
This study looks at 22 other studies to see what helps people trust robots again after they make a mistake. It found that saying sorry or explaining what went wrong might help a little, but we can't be sure those actions are the reason trust improved because the studies didn’t all test things in a fair, random way.
Analysis score
Maximum 100 for a systematic review with meta-analysis.
Where the score came from
When robots do something wrong, people don’t trust them as much. This study looked at whether saying sorry or explaining helps robots win back trust.
Where does this study sit?
Reviews of RCTs (Meta-analyses)
Max 100Randomized Trials
Max 90Reviews of Cohort Studies
Max 85Cohort Studies
Max 72Reviews of Case-Control Studies
Max 63Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional & Case Series
Max 50Expert Opinion
Max 536 / 100
Quality score
The highest quality evidence. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses that pool randomized controlled trials, giving the most reliable summary of experimental evidence.
Key takeaways
Summary
Based on the study abstract and findings.
- 1Even though saying sorry helps, people still don’t fully trust robots again after a mistake, which means better repair methods are needed.
- 2Out of 22 studies with 3,763 people, saying sorry and giving explanations worked best.
- 3But even the best methods only helped a little bit.
Score breakdown, methodology, conflicts of interest, evidence analysis & raw study data
Publication
Journal
2025 20th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)
Year
2025
Authors
Connor Esterwood, L. Robert
Related Content
Claims (4)
Putting together lots of small studies gives a better guess about what's really going on in the whole population than looking at just one small study.
Even the best ways we have to fix trust between people and robots don't work very well — trust doesn't fully come back after it's broken.
When robots mess up, saying sorry or explaining what went wrong works better than other fixes to get people to trust them again — but it still doesn’t work perfectly.
When robots mess up, saying sorry and explaining what went wrong helps people trust them again better than other ways—being honest and owning the mistake really matters.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making health decisions.