Is a humorous robot more trustworthy?

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.