An opinion survey of 878 college students examined attitudes about the suitability of robots for various occupations in society and how these attitudes varied by the robots’ appearance. Factor analyses revealed three primary attitudes: Robot-Liking, Robotphobia and Cyber-Dystopianism, and three occupational niches: social-companionship, surveillance and personal assistants. Attitudes varied depending on subjects’ gender, religion, perceived competence with technologies and engagement with virtual reality environments and avatars. The analysis of relationships between subjects’ attitudes and perception of suitable occupations indicated that Robot-Liking is positively related with social companionship and surveillance occupations, whereas Robotphobia is negatively correlated with the three occupational niches.

A survey of 873 undergraduate students was conducted to understand which individual factors affect subjects' attitudes toward robots. A third of participants (N=284) were exposed to a humanoid robot, another third (N=293) to a doggy robot, and the remaining third (N=296) to an android. Results showed that in the humanoid condition individuals recognize more humanlike characteristics in robots than in the other two conditions. However humanoid appearance did not affect participants' attitudes toward robots, as others predictors recognized by previous research indicate, such as gender, religion, and perceived competence with information and communication technologies (ICT).

We surveyed 912 Americans in the Fall of 1993 about their attitudes toward voice response units (VRUs, also known as voice-based electronic messaging or Interactive Voice Response Units, IVRs) and telephone answering machines or devices (TAMs or TADs). We present data from a national survey to provide an empirical understanding of these novel and significant forms of technologically mediated interpersonal communications. Our results suggest that attitudes toward electronic voice response systems are less closely linked to demographic variables than are attitudes toward answering machines. We uncovered no evidence that the 'information rich' are more positively inclined to electronic voice response systems than the 'information poor'. We also found that attitudes toward the electronic technologies varied strongly by age. The most significant predictor of liking for electronic voice response systems was the quality of one's most recent experience with this technology. We conclude by considering some insights about the formation of attitudes toward these electronic technologies and argue that voice-based services could provide an important access modality to a wide range of electronically-delivered phone services.