Employees lose motivation and get ‘lazy’ when working with robots vs. working with humans, study says

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A new study found that employees are more likely to be lazy when working near or with robots versus working on their own or with a group of people.

Scientists at the Technical University of Berlin in Germany provided images of circuit boards to 42 employees in which the boards were blurred.

Sharpened images could only be viewed by holding a mouse tool over them, according to the study published in the journal Frontiers in Robotics and AI.

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Scientists told half the participants that the circuit they were working on had already been inspected by a robot — and that scientists would be able to track the participants’ inspection of the board, as SWNS reported.

After the examination by the participants, they were asked to rate their own efforts in inspecting the board, how responsible they felt for the task and how they thought they performed. 

A new study has found that employees work less efficiently when robot help is present. The study was done by scientists at the Technical University of Berlin in Germany.  (iStock)

Upon inspection, scientists found that the participants working with the robot were catching fewer defects later in the task once they had seen the robot successfully flag others toward the beginning of the process, according to SWNS. 

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Scientists were able to conclude that participants were not paying the same amount of attention as the evaluation went on as they began to trust the robot had found them already. 

The study found that when people work together, they tend to be less lazy than when working with a robot.  (iStock)

Senior author of the study Dr. Linda Onnasch said it’s hard to "tell whether that visual information is being sufficiently processed at a mental level."

Onnasch said the scientists also found fewer quality errors were found when participants worked in a team versus with the robot. 

"In longer shifts, when tasks are routine and the working environment offers little performance-monitoring and feedback, the loss of motivation tends to be greater," she said, as SWNS reported.  

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Onnasch is professor of psychology of action and automation at the Technical University of Berlin, according to an online bio of her posted by hfes-europe.org. 

Her research, the site says, "focuses on human interaction with automated systems and collaborative robots considering system characteristics, psychological mediators and context factors."

The scientists want to keep looking further into laziness in the workplace.  (Cyberguy.com)

Scientists hope to continue learning more about how big the problem of loss of motivation is in human-robot interaction.

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However, they say they will need to go into the field and test their assumptions in real-life work environments. 

First author of the study Dietlind Helene Cymek noted that teamwork can be a blessing and a curse. 

Scientists hope to continue learning more about how big the problem of loss of motivation is in human-robot interaction. However, they'll need to go into the field and test their assumptions in real-life work environments, they said.  (Getty Images)

"Working together can motivate people to perform well, but it can also lead to a loss of motivation because the individual contribution is not as visible," she said. 

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Cymek is a human factors researcher working in the Berlin metro area, according to her LinkedIn profile. 

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