The Robots are Coming! The Robots are Coming! Fear and Empathy for Human-like Entities

Abstract

Social robots will soon be a part of our everyday work and home lives. Roboticists have assumed that a more human-like appearance in robots will ensure pro-sociality and cooperation between robots and humans. Indeed, people more readily attribute human-like capacities and a perception of mind to such robots. In turn, people show greater empathy for human-like robots. However, a human-like design has also been linked to beliefs about the potential of robots to be evil and cause damage to humanity. The aim of this research was to further investigate these ambivalent emotional reactions. In two studies, participants viewed images of robots of varying human likeness that were also depicted as the main character in a sad situation. Participants rated their sympathy for the robot but also their perceptions of threat. Facial electromyography (EMG) was added in the second study to measure empathic facial responses. We predicted that human likeness would have effects on both empathy and threat responses. We also tested whether these effects would be moderated by social categorization and threat information. Study 1 (n = 201) manipulated the categorization of the robot through changes in the phrasing of the scenarios, whereas Study 2 (n = 120) manipulated threat information about robots by first presenting positive or negative news stories about robots. Consistent with previous research, more human-like robots elicited greater empathic and threat responses, both on self-report and EMG measures. Manipulations of social categorization and threat failed to moderate the effects of human likeness on the measures. These results have considerable implications for the existing human-robot interaction literature and could help inform social robot designs for the future.