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The Eternal Robot: Anchoring Effects in Humans' Mental Models of Robots and Their Self

Current robot designs often reflect an anthropomorphic approach, apparently aiming to convince users through an ideal system, being most similar or even on par with humans. The present paper challenges human-likeness as a design goal and questions whether simulating human appearance and performance...

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Autores principales: Ullrich, Daniel, Butz, Andreas, Diefenbach, Sarah
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7806034/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33501314
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2020.546724
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author Ullrich, Daniel
Butz, Andreas
Diefenbach, Sarah
author_facet Ullrich, Daniel
Butz, Andreas
Diefenbach, Sarah
author_sort Ullrich, Daniel
collection PubMed
description Current robot designs often reflect an anthropomorphic approach, apparently aiming to convince users through an ideal system, being most similar or even on par with humans. The present paper challenges human-likeness as a design goal and questions whether simulating human appearance and performance adequately fits into how humans think about robots in a conceptual sense, i.e., human's mental models of robots and their self. Independent of the technical possibilities and limitations, our paper explores robots' attributed potential to become human-like by means of a thought experiment. Four hundred eighty-one participants were confronted with fictional transitions from human-to-robot and robot-to-human, consisting of 20 subsequent steps. In each step, one part or area of the human (e.g., brain, legs) was replaced with robotic parts providing equal functionalities and vice versa. After each step, the participants rated the remaining humanness and remaining self of the depicted entity on a scale from 0 to 100%. It showed that the starting category (e.g., human, robot) serves as an anchor for all former judgments and can hardly be overcome. Even if all body parts had been exchanged, a former robot was not perceived as totally human-like and a former human not as totally robot-like. Moreover, humanness appeared as a more sensible and easier denied attribute than robotness, i.e., after the objectively same transition and exchange of the same parts, the former human was attributed less humanness and self left compared to the former robot's robotness and self left. The participants' qualitative statements about why the robot has not become human-like, often concerned the (unnatural) process of production, or simply argued that no matter how many parts are exchanged, the individual keeps its original entity. Based on such findings, we suggest that instead of designing most human-like robots in order to reach acceptance, it might be more promising to understand robots as an own “species” and underline their specific characteristics and benefits. Limitations of the present study and implications for future HRI research and practice are discussed.
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spelling pubmed-78060342021-01-25 The Eternal Robot: Anchoring Effects in Humans' Mental Models of Robots and Their Self Ullrich, Daniel Butz, Andreas Diefenbach, Sarah Front Robot AI Robotics and AI Current robot designs often reflect an anthropomorphic approach, apparently aiming to convince users through an ideal system, being most similar or even on par with humans. The present paper challenges human-likeness as a design goal and questions whether simulating human appearance and performance adequately fits into how humans think about robots in a conceptual sense, i.e., human's mental models of robots and their self. Independent of the technical possibilities and limitations, our paper explores robots' attributed potential to become human-like by means of a thought experiment. Four hundred eighty-one participants were confronted with fictional transitions from human-to-robot and robot-to-human, consisting of 20 subsequent steps. In each step, one part or area of the human (e.g., brain, legs) was replaced with robotic parts providing equal functionalities and vice versa. After each step, the participants rated the remaining humanness and remaining self of the depicted entity on a scale from 0 to 100%. It showed that the starting category (e.g., human, robot) serves as an anchor for all former judgments and can hardly be overcome. Even if all body parts had been exchanged, a former robot was not perceived as totally human-like and a former human not as totally robot-like. Moreover, humanness appeared as a more sensible and easier denied attribute than robotness, i.e., after the objectively same transition and exchange of the same parts, the former human was attributed less humanness and self left compared to the former robot's robotness and self left. The participants' qualitative statements about why the robot has not become human-like, often concerned the (unnatural) process of production, or simply argued that no matter how many parts are exchanged, the individual keeps its original entity. Based on such findings, we suggest that instead of designing most human-like robots in order to reach acceptance, it might be more promising to understand robots as an own “species” and underline their specific characteristics and benefits. Limitations of the present study and implications for future HRI research and practice are discussed. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-12-18 /pmc/articles/PMC7806034/ /pubmed/33501314 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2020.546724 Text en Copyright © 2020 Ullrich, Butz and Diefenbach. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Robotics and AI
Ullrich, Daniel
Butz, Andreas
Diefenbach, Sarah
The Eternal Robot: Anchoring Effects in Humans' Mental Models of Robots and Their Self
title The Eternal Robot: Anchoring Effects in Humans' Mental Models of Robots and Their Self
title_full The Eternal Robot: Anchoring Effects in Humans' Mental Models of Robots and Their Self
title_fullStr The Eternal Robot: Anchoring Effects in Humans' Mental Models of Robots and Their Self
title_full_unstemmed The Eternal Robot: Anchoring Effects in Humans' Mental Models of Robots and Their Self
title_short The Eternal Robot: Anchoring Effects in Humans' Mental Models of Robots and Their Self
title_sort eternal robot: anchoring effects in humans' mental models of robots and their self
topic Robotics and AI
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7806034/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33501314
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2020.546724
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