Seeing Minds in Others – Can Agents with Robotic Appearance Have Human-Like Preferences?

Abstract

Ascribing mental states to non-human agents has been shown to increase their likeability and lead to better joint-task performance in human-robot interaction (HRI). However, it is currently unclear what physical features non-human agents need to possess in order to trigger mind attribution and whether different aspects of having a mind (e.g., feeling pain, being able to move) need different levels of human-likeness before they are readily ascribed to non-human agents. The current study addresses this issue by modeling how increasing the degree of human-like appearance (on a spectrum from mechanistic to humanoid to human) changes the likelihood by which mind is attributed towards non-human agents. We also test whether different internal states (e.g., being hungry, being alive) need different degrees of humanness before they are ascribed to non-human agents. The results suggest that the relationship between physical appearance and the degree to which mind is attributed to non-human agents is best described as a two-linear model with no change in mind attribution on the spectrum from mechanistic to humanoid robot, but a significant increase in mind attribution as soon as human features are included in the image. There seems to be a qualitative difference in the perception of mindful versus mindless agents given that increasing human-like appearance alone does not increase mind attribution until a certain threshold is reached, that is: agents need to be classified as having a mind first before the addition of more human-like features significantly increases the degree to which mind is attributed to that agent.

Seeing minds in others: Mind perception modulates low-level social-cognitive performance and relates to ventromedial prefrontal structures

“…Six agent images were created that varied in their degree of physical humanness (in %) from machine-like (100% robot) to human-like (100% human) and were used both for the mind perception task and the social attention task. 1 Changing the physical appearance of an agent in a parametric fashion has been shown to modulate the degree to which mind is attributed to an agent in previous studies (Hackel et al, 2014;Martini et al, 2016) and to alter activation within social brain areas (e.g., Gao, McCarthy, & Scholl, 2010;Looser & Wheatley, 2010;Waytz, Morewedge, et al, 2010;Wheatley, Weinberg, Looser, Moran, & Hajcak, 2011).…”

“…That is, prior studies have not tested whether within-subject variation in brain activation during mind perception is related to subsequent variation in performance on social-cognitive tasks and, if so, which brain areas are most closely related to social-cognitive performance. We address this question by relating brain activation during a mind perception task (i.e., judging the likelihood that agents have internal states; Martini, Gonzalez, & Wiese, 2016) to performance on a low-level social-cognitive task (i.e., attentional orienting to gaze cues; Friesen & Kingstone, 1998). These tasks were chosen based on previous studies showing that (a) judgments regarding others' capacity of having internal states require mind perception (Cheetham, Suter, & Jancke, 2014;Hackel, Looser, & Van Bavel, 2014;Looser & Wheatley, 2010;Martini et al, 2016;Waytz, Gray, et al, 2010), and (b) the degree to which others' gaze is followed is linked to mind perception and other more complex socialcognitive processes like mentalizing (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985).…”

“…In both tasks, we used a set of images that varied in their degree of physical humanness and were created by morphing separate images of a human and a robot face into each other in steps of 20%. Manipulating physical humanness via morphing has been used in previous studies as a reliable tool to manipulate the degree to which mind is perceived in others (Cheetham et al, 2014;Hackel et al, 2014;Looser & Wheatley, 2010;Martini et al, 2016;Waytz, Gray, et al, 2010). The mind perception task was performed inside an fMRI scanner to determine the degree to which reasoning about the agents' capability of having internal states elicited activation within the social brain network; the social attention task was performed outside the scanner, and reaction times were collected in order to assess the degree to which the agents' gaze triggered shifts of spatial attention to gazed-at locations.…”

“…The mind perception task was performed inside of an fMRI scanner and involved making judgments about the capability of different agents (varying in their degree of physical humanness) of having internal states (see Martini et al, 2016). The sequence of events on a given trial is shown in Fig.…”

From automata to animate beings: the scope and limits of attributing socialness to artificial agents

“…For instance, emotions expressed by artificial agents, especially in the case of negative emotions, are sometimes difficult to recognize by human observers . Martini et al . directly investigated the role of a human‐like appearance of an artificial agent on the attribution of different states to the artificial agent, including emotions, goals, and agency.…”