Social Conformity to Bots

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall, the manuscript addresses an interesting and timely topic; however, several substantive issues need to be addressed before the paper can be considered for publication.

1.Insufficient synthesis in the Introduction
The Introduction primarily describes the experimental procedure, but it fails to provide a clear and coherent synthesis of the manuscript’s core contributions. In particular, the authors do not explicitly summarize the key findings or articulate what concrete and meaningful conclusions are drawn from the study. The Introduction should clearly highlight the central concepts, theoretical contributions, and main results of the manuscript, rather than functioning merely as a description of the experimental process.

2.Limited description of participant characteristics
The manuscript provides insufficient detail regarding the characteristics of the experimental sample. A more comprehensive description of participants’ demographic and socioeconomic background—such as occupation, income level, and educational attainment—would substantially enhance the empirical robustness and interpretability of the findings, as well as strengthen the validity of the study’s conclusions.

3.Lack of manipulation check for robot stance
The study does not formally verify the effectiveness of the “supportive vs. opposing” stance manipulation of the robot. For example, no post-experimental questionnaire is reported to confirm whether participants actually perceived the robot’s intended position. If the expected stance differs from participants’ actual perception, the experimental results may be confounded. A manipulation check is therefore necessary to ensure internal validity.

4.Insufficient theoretical depth in explaining null findings
The explanation for the non-significant result of Hypothesis 3 is underdeveloped. The authors are encouraged to provide a more theoretically grounded discussion, potentially supported by subgroup analyses (e.g., left-leaning vs. neutral/right-leaning participants), to explore alternative mechanisms. Possible explanations may include the prioritization of perceived group consensus over stance congruence, or the attenuation of opposition effects due to political homogeneity within the sample.

5.Lack of concrete practical implications
Although the manuscript briefly suggests that anthropomorphic cues may promote conformity, it does not translate this insight into actionable design or policy recommendations. More concrete guidance—such as design norms for robot avatars, transparency requirements, or regulatory considerations—would significantly enhance the practical and policy relevance of the study.

Author Response

Comment 1: Insufficient synthesis in the Introduction
The Introduction primarily describes the experimental procedure, but it fails to provide a clear and coherent synthesis of the manuscript’s core contributions. In particular, the authors do not explicitly summarize the key findings or articulate what concrete and meaningful conclusions are drawn from the study. The Introduction should clearly highlight the central concepts, theoretical contributions, and main results of the manuscript, rather than functioning merely as a description of the experimental process.
Response 1: Improved the Introductions section and added main findings.

 

Comment 2: Limited description of participant characteristics
The manuscript provides insufficient detail regarding the characteristics of the experimental sample. A more comprehensive description of participants’ demographic and socioeconomic background—such as occupation, income level, and educational attainment—would substantially enhance the empirical robustness and interpretability of the findings, as well as strengthen the validity of the study’s conclusions.
Response 2: Extended the participant's descriptions emphasizing they have been university students in social sciences.

Comment 3: Lack of manipulation check for robot stance
The study does not formally verify the effectiveness of the “supportive vs. opposing” stance manipulation of the robot. For example, no post-experimental questionnaire is reported to confirm whether participants actually perceived the robot’s intended position. If the expected stance differs from participants’ actual perception, the experimental results may be confounded. A manipulation check is therefore necessary to ensure internal validity.
Response 3: Added explanation regarding the manipulation. The bot manipulation has been individually tailored for each participant to push by 2 on the 5 point scale, thus their stances should have been clear to participants. We think it is more likely the scale has been to coarse and thus was unable to capture differences, but added recommendations for further work regarding the subject.

Comment 4: Insufficient theoretical depth in explaining null findings
The explanation for the non-significant result of Hypothesis 3 is underdeveloped. The authors are encouraged to provide a more theoretically grounded discussion, potentially supported by subgroup analyses (e.g., left-leaning vs. neutral/right-leaning participants), to explore alternative mechanisms. Possible explanations may include the prioritization of perceived group consensus over stance congruence, or the attenuation of opposition effects due to political homogeneity within the sample.
Response 4: Related to the previous comment, we have greatly extended the section in the manuscript discussing these null results. We aimed to do subgroup analysis but unfortunately the sample is highly homogeneous mainly consisting of mid to far left participants and not enough observations from the other categories to make analysis meaningful. The explanations listed in the comments are likely to be in play, and also added them to the discussions.

Comment 5: Lack of concrete practical implications
Although the manuscript briefly suggests that anthropomorphic cues may promote conformity, it does not translate this insight into actionable design or policy recommendations. More concrete guidance—such as design norms for robot avatars, transparency requirements, or regulatory considerations—would significantly enhance the practical and policy relevance of the study.
Response 5: Added more specific recommendations to the conclusions part of the paper. The study highlights that transparency and labelling is not enough to avoid manipulation from bots if they have minimal humanizations, thus we emphasize the importance of access controls and account verification, and stricter regulatory control.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article has very clear structure and also produces clear results. I like very much the honesty of the researchers when they were recruiting the students. While this research follows its chosen approach and leads to clearcut conclusions it also raised my curiosity in several points. Article lists such factors as gender, political leanings and self-reported familiarity of certain features but to get deeper results it would have been interesting to find more about the respondents and their backgrounds as well as mindset (and especially thinking about the bots). Anyway, this article is ready to be published as it is and I am not asking to go back to the beginning, just raising ideas for further studies. 

Author Response

Comment 1: This article has very clear structure and also produces clear results. I like very much the honesty of the researchers when they were recruiting the students. While this research follows its chosen approach and leads to clearcut conclusions it also raised my curiosity in several points. Article lists such factors as gender, political leanings and self-reported familiarity of certain features but to get deeper results it would have been interesting to find more about the respondents and their backgrounds as well as mindset (and especially thinking about the bots). Anyway, this article is ready to be published as it is and I am not asking to go back to the beginning, just raising ideas for further studies. 
Response 1: Streamlined the article, improved clarity and added some further details about participants. We like the ideas listed here and have been considering incorporating them in further work.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript addresses a timely and highly relevant topic, offering an original and methodologically sound contribution to the literature on social conformity and artificial agents. The experimental design is robust, transparent, and well aligned with the stated hypotheses, and the results convincingly demonstrate that bots (when minimally humanized) can exert significant social influence in both objective and subjective domains.

This improvements could further strengthen the manuscript:

1. Discussion depth: While the discussion is coherent, it would benefit from a deeper theoretical engagement with some of the findings, particularly the observed gender differences and the role of personality traits. These results are interesting but could be better situated within broader psychological and sociological debates.

2. Redundancy reduction: Certain sections of the Results and Conclusions partially reiterate earlier arguments. Streamlining these passages would improve readability and sharpen the overall narrative.

3. Language and style: Although the English is generally adequate, careful copy-editing is recommended. Shortening overly long sentences and improving stylistic consistency would enhance clarity and accessibility.

4. Generalizability: The authors appropriately acknowledge the limitations of the student sample. Expanding slightly on how future studies could address this limitation—methodologically or comparatively—would strengthen the paper’s forward-looking contribution.

Overall, this is a strong manuscript with high scholarly merit. With moderate revisions focused on clarity, discussion depth, and language polishing, it would be well suited for publication.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

As indicated in point 3 above, while the overall quality of English is adequate and the manuscript is fully understandable, the language would benefit from targeted revision to improve clarity and fluency. In particular, the text contains several long and syntactically dense sentences that occasionally obscure the main argument or delay the key point. There is also some repetition in phrasing, especially in the Results, Discussion, and Conclusions sections, which could be reduced to enhance readability. A careful stylistic edit focusing on conciseness, sentence structure, and terminological consistency would significantly strengthen the manuscript and help the authors convey their contributions more clearly and effectively to an international academic audience.

Author Response

Comment 1: Discussion depth: While the discussion is coherent, it would benefit from a deeper theoretical engagement with some of the findings, particularly the observed gender differences and the role of personality traits. These results are interesting but could be better situated within broader psychological and sociological debates.
Response 1: We have extended the discussion part of the manuscript to further cover these aspects. The role of gender and personality is especially interesting, but it is difficult to generalize because of the characteristics of our sample. We plan to investigate these aspects in more detail in future work.

Comment 2: Redundancy reduction: Certain sections of the Results and Conclusions partially reiterate earlier arguments. Streamlining these passages would improve readability and sharpen the overall narrative.
Response 2: We have improved the structure of the manuscript to reduce redundancy. The streamlined version has the Results, Discussion, Conclusion sections more clearly delineated.

Comment 3: Language and style: Although the English is generally adequate, careful copy-editing is recommended. Shortening overly long sentences and improving stylistic consistency would enhance clarity and accessibility.
Response 3: We have edited the manuscript to improve language and readability.

Comment 4: Generalizability: The authors appropriately acknowledge the limitations of the student sample. Expanding slightly on how future studies could address this limitation—methodologically or comparatively—would strengthen the paper’s forward-looking contribution.
Response 4: Extended the description of our sample and in Discussions detail what effects that might have on our results. Using university students is a standard practice in the field, and in our experiment they were likely more resistant to manipulation compared to the average person. We detail recommendation for future work to mitigate the limitations we have faced, such as the need for an ideologically more heterogeneous sample.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I have carefully reviewed the revised manuscript and the authors’ point-by-point responses to my previous comments.

I am satisfied that all of my concerns raised in the first round of review have been adequately and appropriately addressed. The authors have substantially improved the clarity, rigor, and overall quality of the manuscript.