How people anthropomorphize robots

Abstract

We explored anthropomorphism in people's reactions to a robot in social context vs. their more considered judgments of robots in the abstract. Participants saw a photo and read transcripts from a health interview by a robot or human interviewer. For half of the participants, the interviewer was polite and for the other half, the interviewer was impolite. Participants then summarized the interactions in their own words and responded true or false to adjectives describing the interviewer. They later completed a post-task survey about whether a robot interviewer would possess moods, attitudes, and feelings. The results showed substantial anthropomorphism in participants' interview summaries and true-false responses, but minimal anthropomorphism in the abstract robot survey. Those who interacted with the robot interviewer tended to anthropomorphize more in the post-task survey, suggesting that as people interact more with robots, their abstract conceptions of them will become more anthropomorphic.