Imagining human–robot encounters: Youth narratives and commonsense understandings of social interaction with Pepper robot

As social robots enter public spaces, there remains a gap in understanding how people imagine and evaluate their roles as social actors. This study explores the social dynamics of human-robot interaction (HRI) using the Method of Empathy-Based Stories (MEBS). Participants imagined encounters with a robot at a youth center, producing 158 stories that reveal culturally situated reasoning grounded in everyday social expectations. Positive interactions were marked by the robot’s ability to “pass as social”, where adherence to interactional norms enabled smooth exchanges despite technological limitations. In contrast, negative stories exposed failures such as unresponsiveness, rudeness, or lack of social competence, leading to distrust or disappointment. These findings underscore the situated nature of HRI, suggesting that successful interaction depends less on a robot’s “real internal states” and more on its capacity to align with normative expectations of context and practice.