  As social and socially assistive robots are becoming more prevalent in our
society, it is beneficial to understand how people form first impressions of
them and eventually come to trust and accept them. This paper describes an
Amazon Mechanical Turk study (n = 239) that investigated trust and its
antecedents trustworthiness and first impressions. Participants evaluated the
social robot Pepper's warmth and competence as well as trustworthiness
characteristics ability, benevolence and integrity followed by their trust in
and intention to use the robot. Mediation analyses assessed to what degree
participants' first impressions affected their willingness to trust and use it.
Known constructs from user acceptance and trust research were introduced to
explain the pathways in which one perception predicted the next. Results showed
that trustworthiness and trust, in serial, mediated the relationship between
first impressions and behavioral intention.
