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Too Human to Be a Machine? Social Robots, Anthropomorphic Appearance, and Concerns on the Negative Impact of This Technology on Humans and Their Identity

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Too Human to Be a Machine? Social Robots, Anthropomorphic Appearance, and Concerns on the Negative Impact of This Technology on Humans and Their Identity View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Unitn-eprints PhD University of Trento Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science Doctoral School in Psychology and Education XXVIII Cycle Too Human To Be a Machine? Social robots, anthropomorphic appearance, and concerns on the negative impact of this technology on humans and their identity. PhD Candidate Francesco Ferrari Advisor: Prof. Maria Paola Paladino Academic Year 2015/2016 Alla mia famiglia 5 Content Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 7 CHAPTER 1 Theoretical Introduction ................................................................................................. 9 1.1 Technology to interact with: Social Robots ................................................................................ 9 1.2 Meeting social robots I: The appearance .................................................................................. 11 1.3 Meeting social robots II: Why is humanlike appearance important? .................................... 17 1.3.1 Functional approach ................................................................................................................ 17 1.3.2 Psychological approach .......................................................................................................... 19 1.4 The Uncanny Valley theory ........................................................................................................ 22 1.4.1 Evolutionary biological .......................................................................................................... 25 1.4.2 Expectancy violations and cognitive conflicts ....................................................................... 27 1.4.3 Social – motivational defense ................................................................................................. 29 1.5 Concluding remarks .................................................................................................................... 31 1.6 Research questions ...................................................................................................................... 33 CHAPTER 2 Validation of “a Psychological Scale for General Impressions of Humanoids” in an Italian Sample ........................................................................................................................................ 35 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 35 2.2 Factorial Validation of PSGIH ................................................................................................... 37 2.3 Method .......................................................................................................................................... 38 2.3.1 Participants. ............................................................................................................................ 38 2.3.2 Pretest on Pictures of Robots. ................................................................................................. 38 2.3.3 The “Psychological Scale of General Impressions of Humanoids” ....................................... 41 2.4 Results and Discussion ................................................................................................................ 42 2.4.1 The Factors analysis of the PSGIH ......................................................................................... 42 2.4.2 Similarities and differences between the present and the Kamide’s results ........................... 44 2.4.3 Inter-factor correlations .......................................................................................................... 47 2.5 Conclusions .................................................................................................................................. 48 CHAPTER 3 Blurring Human-Machine Distinction ........................................................................ 50 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 50 3.2 Related work ................................................................................................................................ 52 3.3 Overview of the research and hypotheses ................................................................................. 55 6 3.4 Study 1 .......................................................................................................................................... 57 3.4.1 Method .................................................................................................................................... 57 3.4.2 Results..................................................................................................................................... 61 3.4.3 Discussion ............................................................................................................................... 65 3.5 Study 2 .......................................................................................................................................... 66 3.5.1 Method .................................................................................................................................... 66 3.5.2 Results..................................................................................................................................... 69 3.5.3 Discussion ............................................................................................................................... 73 3.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 74 CHAPTER 4 General Discussion, Limitations and Future Research.............................................. 76 4.1 General Discussion ...................................................................................................................... 76 4.2 Limitations and future research ................................................................................................ 80 4.3 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 84 References .............................................................................................................................................. 85 Acknowledgement ............................................................................................................................... 100 7 Introduction In this thesis I will talk about social robots, their appearance, and people’s concerns about potential negative impacts that social robotics technology could have on humans and their identity. The aim is to contribute to the understanding of why people fear social robots, and what the role of humanlike appearance is within this process. Social robots represent a new, fascinating technology. Research in social robotics not only develops new and better social robots but also tries to understand and prevent eventual problems that could arise when people and robots coexist. Moreover, the relations and reactions to social robots, especially those who highly resemble humans, is also an interesting topic from a social psychology point of view. Taking up professor Ishiguro’s words, developing androids opens up the question of “what is human?” (Guizzo, 2010). The study of psychological processes related to machines that imitate real persons allows us to know more about ourselves as human beings. In Chapter 1, I will define what a social robot is and then focus on their appearance. After discussing the motives that lead to the development of robots with an anthropomorphic appearance, I will focus on the Uncanny Valley. Based on a review of the literature, I identified two open issues: the difficulty of comparing the results of empirical studies due to the fact that different questionnaires are used from study to study and the relatively few studies that investigate the relation between anthropomorphic appearance and the social acceptance of social robots. These issues were empirically addressed in Chapters 2 and 3, respectively. In Chapter 2, I report a study of validation of the Psychological Scale of General Impressions of Humanoids (Kamide et al., 2012) in an Italian sample. In Chapter 3, I investigate, through a social psychological perspective, the relation between anthropomorphic appearance and the concern related to this kind of technology. Specifically, a threat to distinctiveness hypothesis was advanced and two studies are presented. Finally, in Chapter 4, I discuss the findings of the present research and their implications on social robotics research. 8 As the present thesis and its studies were developed under the supervision of prof. Paladino, in the next chapters the ideas and hypothesis will be introduced using the form “we”. 9 CHAPTER 1 Theoretical Introduction 1.1 Technology to interact with: Social Robots Social robots are autonomous machines that aim to perform social tasks. Several definitions of “social robots” have been advanced. Kanda, Ishiguro and Ishida (2001) defined a social robot as “a robot that interacts with humans and participates in human society” (pp. 4166). Duffy (2003) portrayed these machines as “physical entities
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