Empathizing with robots: Fellow feeling along the anthropomorphic spectrum

A long-standing question within the robotics community is about the degree of human-likeness robots ought to have when interacting with humans. We explore an unexamined aspect of this problem: how people empathize with robots along the anthropomorphic spectrum. We conducted a web-based experiment (n...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2009 3rd International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction and Workshops pp. 1 - 6
Main Authors Riek, L.D., Rabinowitch, T.-C., Chakrabarti, B., Robinson, P.
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.09.2009
Subjects
Anthropomorphism
Autism
Brain modeling
Footwear
Human robot interaction
Humanoid robots
Laboratories
Psychology
Robot sensing systems
Testing
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ISBN9781424448005
142444800X
ISSN2156-8103
DOI10.1109/ACII.2009.5349423

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Summary:A long-standing question within the robotics community is about the degree of human-likeness robots ought to have when interacting with humans. We explore an unexamined aspect of this problem: how people empathize with robots along the anthropomorphic spectrum. We conducted a web-based experiment (n = 120) that measured how people empathized with four different robots shown to be experiencing mistreatment by humans. Our results indicate that people empathize more strongly with more human-looking robots and less with mechanical looking robots. We also found that a person's general ability to empathize has no predictive value for expressed empathy toward robots.
ISBN:9781424448005
142444800X
ISSN:2156-8103
DOI:10.1109/ACII.2009.5349423