Researchers have found that people quickly develop trust in expressive, engaging humanoid robots, but that trust can collapse just as rapidly when the robots make mistakes. The findings could help designers create more reliable social robots for healthcare, education, customer service, and home environments. Expressive robots falter Researchers have shown that making humanoid robots more expressive can strengthen human engagement, but it also makes trust far more fragile when the robots make mistakes. The new study explored how people respond to a humanoid robot named Pepper during extended face-to-face interactions. Although both robot versions experienced sharp declines in trust, expressive behaviors amplified the consequences of failures instead of protecting against them.