When robots appear to have a mind: The human perception of machine agency and responsibility

Abstract

An important topic in the field of social and developmental psychology is how humans attribute mental traits and states to others. With the growing presence of robots in society, humans are confronted with a new category of social agents. This paper presents an empirical study demonstrating how psychological theory may be used for the human interpretation of robot behavior. Specifically, in this study we applied Weiner's Theory of Social Conduct as a theoretical background for studying attributions of agency and responsibility to NAO robots. Our results suggest that if a robot's failure appears to be caused by its (lack of) effort, as compared to its (lack of) ability, human observers attribute significantly more agency and, although to a lesser extent, more responsibility to the robot. However, affective and behavioral responses to robots differ in such cases as compared to reactions to human agents.