Children's Judgments of Anti-Social Behaviour Towards a Robot: Liking and Learning

Abstract

Children have been documented extending prosocial ideals and moral worth towards robots. However, there is also emerging evidence that children will behave violently towards robots. Given expectations that robots will soon become common fixtures in classrooms, and that children can behave violently towards robots, it is important that we identify how others might appraise the victims (robots) and perpetrators (children) of these scenarios. It is critical that we understand whether children will think it is okay to behave immorally towards a robot, or if they will be deterred by these acts of abuse. Additionally, we must determine how this will influence children's learning decisions. The proposed study aims to address these questions by creating a novel paradigm where children are asked to rate robots and humans who have been involved in a transgression, where the human behaves anti-socially towards the robot. This study will also aim to understand how these appraisals will influence childrens learning decisions in a forced choice, selective learning task.