Would You Turn Off a Robot because It Confronts You with your Own Mortality?

摘要

A future world populated by robots is a projection that has long inspired and still inspires science-fiction stories. As their complexity increase people can help but compare to these artificial entities and why not question their own "human nature". While it is easy to assess the superiority of humans on many dimensions, there is one, central to all humans that is not in favor of our kind: the mortality. In this study, we investigate how individuals react toward a robot that makes this comparison dimension stand out and how it may define attitudes towards robots and pro/antisocial behaviors towards them. Also, we evaluate the role of robot anthropomorphism and the spiritual thoughts activation as mediators of the above-mentioned process. Our study's results demonstrate that facing a robot that confronts people with their own mortality results in less positive attitudes towards robots, and a higher likelihood of acting negatively toward them. Also, this particular robot tends to energize more spiritual thoughts among participants and less human traits attribution. Finally, we show that spirituality may be paradoxically associated with more anthropomorphism and more negative attitude showing the ambiguous multi-component stance of this dimension. These results are discussed in terms of attitudes towards robots, Terror Management Theory, social comparison process and implications for future human-robot interaction (HRI)