Last year, my father and I were displaced by a hockey puck the artificially intelligent Amazon Echo Dot. As my family was getting ready to go to my uncle’s house, my sister asked my father how cold it was outside. My father in response told her that it wasn’t too chilly out and that she wouldn’t need to wear her coat. Immediately afterwards, however, my sister asked the Amazon Echo Dot also known by her wake word “Alexa” what the temperature was. “Alexa” curtly responded with the current temperature, the expected high and low temperatures of the day, and how cloudy it was. My father asked my sister why she didn’t take him at his word, and she simply responded, “I just wanted to make sure” … The present study examined whether social comparison processes and the pratfall effect exist in the human-robot interaction (HRI) domain. Contrastive upward-comparison theory states when one evaluates oneself in comparison to a superior target perceived as having an unobtainable status, the comparer feels relatively disadvantaged, and may undergo negative psychological consequences (e.g. a worsened self-concept). Because artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly human-like and flawless in its cognitive abilities, the present study hypothesized subjects outperformed by a perfectly performing robot will make contrastive upward-comparisons to it and develop negative feelings of inferiority. The present study also hypothesized, in light of the pratfall effect, that an erroneous robot would be perceived as more humanlike and likeable than an error-free robot.

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• Psychology