  As more and more social robots are being used for collaborative activities
with humans, it is crucial to investigate mechanisms to facilitate trust in the
human-robot interaction. One such mechanism is humour: it has been shown to
increase creativity and productivity in human-human interaction, which has an
indirect influence on trust. In this study, we investigate if humour can
increase trust in human-robot interaction. We conducted a between-subjects
experiment with 40 participants to see if the participants are more likely to
accept the robot's suggestion in the Three-card Monte game, as a trust check
task. Though we were unable to find a significant effect of humour, we discuss
the effect of possible confounding variables, and also report some interesting
qualitative observations from our study: for instance, the participants
interacted effectively with the robot as a team member, regardless of the
humour or no-humour condition.
