You Look Human, But Act Like a Machine: Agent Appearance and Behavior Modulate Different Aspects of Human-Robot Interaction.

Abdulaziz Abubshait,Eva Wiese

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01393

Abstract

Gaze following occurs automatically in social interactions, but the degree to which gaze is followed depends on whether an agent is perceived to have a mind, making its behavior socially more relevant for the interaction. Mind perception also modulates the attitudes we have toward others, and determines the degree of empathy, prosociality, and morality invested in social interactions. Seeing mind in others is not exclusive to human agents, but mind can also be ascribed to non-human agents like robots, as long as their appearance and/or behavior allows them to be perceived as intentional beings. Previous studies have shown that human appearance and reliable behavior induce mind perception to robot agents, and positively affect attitudes and performance in human–robot interaction. What has not been investigated so far is whether different triggers of mind perception have an independent or interactive effect on attitudes and performance in human–robot interaction. We examine this question by manipulating agent appearance (human vs. robot) and behavior (reliable vs. random) within the same paradigm and examine how congruent (human/reliable vs. robot/random) versus incongruent (human/random vs. robot/reliable) combinations of these triggers affect performance (i.e., gaze following) and attitudes (i.e., agent ratings) in human–robot interaction. The results show that both appearance and behavior affect human–robot interaction but that the two triggers seem to operate in isolation, with appearance more strongly impacting attitudes, and behavior more strongly affecting performance. The implications of these findings for human–robot interaction are discussed.

Highlights

In social interactions, we use information from gestures, facial expression or gaze direction to make inferences about what others think, feel or intend to do
The goal of the current experiment was to examine whether appearance and behavior interact in their ability to trigger mind perception to non-human agents, and if so, how congruent versus incongruent combinations of these triggers affect social-cognitive performance and agent ratings
If mind perception played a role for social-cognitive performance, gaze following should be stronger in conditions where mind was likely to be attributed to the gazer compared to conditions where mind attribution was not likely

Summary

Introduction

We use information from gestures, facial expression or gaze direction to make inferences about what others think, feel or intend to do (i.e., mentalizing; Adolphs, 1999; Emery, 2000; Gallagher and Frith, 2003). In order to trigger mind perception, non-human entities need to display signs of intentionality via appearance (Kiesler et al, 2008; Looser and Wheatley, 2010; Admoni et al, 2011) and/or behavior (Morewedge, 2009; Waytz et al, 2010; Wiese et al, 2014). Entities without human appearance can still trigger mind perception when their behavior is predictable (Morewedge, 2009; Pfeiffer et al, 2011), leads to negative outcomes (Waytz et al, 2010), or resembles movement patterns reminiscent of human–human interactions (Heider and Simmel, 1944; Abell et al, 2000; Castelli et al, 2000). Behavior is interpreted as intentional when it is believed to be reliable (Süßenbach and Schönbrodt, 2014; Wiese et al, 2014) or to be generated by a human (Wiese et al, 2012; Wykowska et al, 2014; Özdem et al, 2016)

Methods

Results

Conclusion