Not as bad as it seems: When the presence of a threatening humanoid robot improves human performance

Abstract

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Cognitive Impact of Social Robots: How Anthropomorphism Boosts Performances

“…According to the Ethopoeia concept [10], automatic social reactions are triggered by situations that include social cues, which need not all originate from other humans [11], [12]. This concept also seems to apply to human-robot interactions (HRIs) [3], [5], [7], [10], [13]. For example, it has been shown that the modalities of interaction might directly affect how humans consider artificial social agents in response to the same robot [3], [5], [6].…”

“…This concept also seems to apply to human-robot interactions (HRIs) [3], [5], [7], [10], [13]. For example, it has been shown that the modalities of interaction might directly affect how humans consider artificial social agents in response to the same robot [3], [5], [6].…”

“…For instance, a recent study [5] showed that a robot acting positively with participants (e.g., with empathy and consideration) during a question/answer paradigm produced less SFI than a robot acting negatively (e.g., with contempt and a lack of empathy). In the presence of a "bad" robot, participants tended to improve their selective attention performances (i.e., the ability to select the pertinent information in a task or a context and to ignore the nonrelevant information) on the Stroop task (in which individuals must identify the color in which a word is printed, while ignoring the word itself).…”

“…These findings run counter to a purely mechanistic approach, which reduces the effects of a robot's presence to the physical, visual, or acoustic distraction by an object, sometimes affecting human performance [9], and to the role of anthropomorphism. <AU: Please check whether the preceding edited paragraph conveys the intended meaning.> However, because of the design used, Spatola et al 's [5], [6] research could not specify the exact role of anthropomorphic inferences in the robot SFI on cognitive performance, and the nature of the anthropomorphic mediator of SFI effects remains unclear. Indeed, anthropomorphism is a complex concept that brings together various psychological processes, such as social categorization or the modulation of the conceptual distance between humans and robots.…”

“…If the context requires the system to interpret the movements of the robot in terms of human characteristics, then the system could act more forcefully to transform a weak bottom-up signal into a valid representation at the level of motor resonance by using top-down inferences concerning robots (i.e., social scripts, anthropomorphic inferences) [53], [56]. Due to these bottomup/top-down processes, robots could trigger the same effect as humans do [3], [5] simply by being present and could, for example, activate "humanization" processes (i.e., attributing to them intentions, emotions, or mental states comparable to those of humans) [44], [57]- [59]. In other words, the process might represent the opposite of dehumanization.…”