Influence of Agent Type and Task Ambiguity on Conformity in Social Decision Making

Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated reliable effects of social pressure on conformity and social decision-making in human-human interaction. The current study investigates whether non-human agents are also capable of inducing similar social pressure effects; in particular, we examined whether the degree of physical human-likeness of an agent (i.e., appearance) modulates conformity and whether potential effects of agent type on conformity are modulated further by task ambiguity. To answer these questions, participants performed a line judgment task together with agents of different degrees of humanness (human, robot, computer) in either a high or low ambiguity version of the task. We expected an increase in conformity rates for agents with increasing levels of physical humanness, as well as for increasing levels of task ambiguity. Results showed low-level conformity with all agents, with a significant difference in conformity between the high and low ambiguity version of the task (i.e., stronger compliance for the high versus the low task); the degree of humanness, however, did not have an influence on conformity rates (neither alone or in combination with task type). The results suggest that when performing a task together with others, participants always conform to some degree with the social interaction partner independent of its level of humanness; the level of conformity, however, depends on task ambiguity with stronger compliance across agents for more ambiguous tasks.

Interpersonal Closeness Correlates With Social Influence on Color Perception Task Using Human and Artificial Agents

“…These results suggest that explicit humanness has little or no connection with social influence. These results further confirm Hertz and Wiese's (2016) finding that the humanness of the agents does not affect the level of conformity. In contrast to the study by Hertz and Wiese, though, the type of robot used and the manner by which agents were displayed differed in the current study.…”

“…Therefore, in order to enhance the social influence of artificial agents, it is necessary to investigate the psychological factors that are associated with social influence in human beings. One example of such a previous attempt is a study by Hertz and Wiese (2016), in which the authors hypothesized that the level of an agent's humanness may have an effect on conformity. To do so, they conducted an Asch line judgment task (Asch, 1951) with three types of agents-human, computer, and humanoid-all of which were presented to the participants via a screen.…”

“…The former scale assesses trust in the context of interpersonal relationships, whereas the latter questionnaire assesses how participants perceive the robot's anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, intelligence, and safety. Although Hertz and Wiese (2016) maintain that it is unlikely that anthropomorphism has a connection with social influence, it is possible that social influence may be related to some other aspects by which robots are perceived by humans.…”

Asch conformity experiment using immersive virtual reality

“…This study differs from the works of Hertz et al, Midden et al, and Rayborn‐Reeves et al, as the participants were immersed in the virtual environment with the use of VR technology. The participants' isolation from the physical world, combined with stereoscopic projection and head tracking, strengthens presence, that is, the feeling of being in that virtual place.…”

Implicit mind perception alters vigilance performance due to cognitive conflict processing

“…As a result, intentional agents can be differentiated from mechanistic agents within a few hundred milliseconds (Wheatley, Weinberg, Looser, Moran, & Hajcak, 2011;Looser, Guntupalli, & Wheatley, 2013), and even passively viewing stimuli triggering mind perception is sufficient to activate social brain networks (Wagner, Kelley, & Heatherton, 2011), even if their mind status is task-irrelevant (Wiese et al, 2014;Wykowska et al, 2014;Martini et al, 2015). "Mind" can also be ascribed to others in an explicit or top-down fashion when the presence of a social entity is needed or when an entity has become so important to an individual that a "machine" status would not be sufficient: nonhuman entities are more likely treated as "human" when individuals are in increased need of social contact due to chronic loneliness (Hackel, Looser, & Van Bavel, 2014), when they have to cooperate with the entities (Hertz & Wiese, 2016) or when they have interacted with the entities for a long time. For instance, soldiers who interacted with search robots on an everyday basis in potentially dangerous situations have been reported to refuse to agree to install updates on their robots because they feared this would change their "personality" (Singer, 2008;Carpenter, 2016).…”