Try to see it my way: Humans Take the Level‐1 Visual Perspective of Humanoid Robot Avatars

摘要

Visual perspective taking (VPT) is a fundamental process of social cognition. To date, however, only a handful of studies have investigated whether humans also take the perspective of humanoid robots. Recent findings on this topic are conflicting as one study found no evidence for level 1 VPT (i.e., which object is seen by the agent) and a different study has found evidence for level 2 VPT (i.e., how is the object seen by the agent). These results are puzzling given that level 1 VPT is a foundational ability for level 2 VPT. The latter study proposed that the human-like appearance of robots triggers VPT (mere-appearance hypothesis). In the present study, we tested level 1 VPT for humanoid robots and the robustness of the mere-appearance hypothesis. We manipulated the appearance of the robot (i.e., either shown with a human-like or artificial head), and whether it was presented as switched on or off. We found that all manipulations triggered VPT, showing, in contrast to earlier findings, level 1 VPT for robots. Also, our findings support the mere-appearance hypothesis as VPT was triggered regardless of whether the robot was switched on or off, and show that the mere-appearance hypothesis is robust with regard to alterations of human-like appearance.