The effects of caregiving robots on mortality salience with the elderly

As the world’s population of elderly persons rises (He, Goodkind, & Kowal, 2016), there is an increasing demand for people to care for the elderly. Caregiving robots are a potential solution to this problem. Research (i.e. MacDorman, 2005) suggests that uncanny, humanlike robots may elicit death anxiety, but it remains unclear whether non-humanlike caregiving robots also elicit death anxiety. This study expands on MacDorman’s study and investigates the effects of caregiving robots on death thought accessibility (DTA) and death anxiety in the institutionalized elderly. This research focuses on how caregiving robots affect the close relationship buffer against death anxiety, as well as looking at self-esteem and locus of control as potential covariates of DTA and death anxiety. A video of a non-humanlike caregiving robot as a mortality salience induction and a video of a human caregiver as a control video are used as stimuli. The results showed no significant differences in death anxiety and DTA between the human and robot caregivers. There were no interactions involving self-esteem and locus of control. Implications are discussed

Overcoming the uncanny valley: Displays of emotions reduce the uncanniness of humanlike robots

In this paper we show empirically that highly humanlike robots make thoughts of death more accessible, leading to perceptions of uncanniness and eeriness of such robots. Rather than reducing the humanlikeness of robots, our research suggests the addition of emotion displays to decrease a sense of uncanniness. We show that a highly humanlike robot displaying emotions in a social context reduces death-thought accessibility (DTA), which in turn reduces uncanniness. In a pre-test with N = 95 participants, we established that not all humanoid robots elicit thoughts of death and that the extent to which a robot appears humanlike may be linked to DTA. In our Main Study, N = 44 participants briefly interacted with a highly humanlike robotic head that either showed appropriate basic emotions or reacted by blinking. The display of emotions significantly reduced perceptions of uncanniness, which was mediated by a corresponding reduction in DTA. Implications for the design of humanoid robots are proposed.EPSR

Sending an Avatar to Do a Human’s Job: Compliance with Authority Persists Despite the Uncanny Valley

Just as physical appearance affects social influence in human communication, it may also affect the processing of advice conveyed through avatars, computer-animated characters, and other human-like interfaces. Although the most persuasive computer interfaces are often the most human-like, they have been predicted to incur the greatest risk of falling into the uncanny valley, the loss of empathy attributed to characters that appear eerily human. Previous studies compared interfaces on the left side of the uncanny valley, namely, those with low human likeness. To examine interfaces with higher human realism, a between-groups factorial experiment was conducted through the internet with 426 midwestern U.S. undergraduates. This experiment presented a hypothetical ethical dilemma followed by the advice of an authority figure. The authority was manipulated in three ways: depiction (digitally recorded or computer animated), motion quality (smooth or jerky), and advice (disclose or refrain from disclosing sensitive information). Of these, only the advice changed opinion about the ethical dilemma, even though the animated depiction was significantly eerier than the human depiction. These results indicate that compliance with an authority persists even when using an uncannily realistic computer-animated double

Investigating the Uncanny Valley Phenomenon Through the Temporal Dynamics of Neural Responses to Virtual Characters

The Uncanny Valley phenomenon refers to the feeling of unease that arises when interacting with characters that appear almost, but not quite, human-like. First theorised by Masahiro Mori in 1970, it has since been widely observed in different contexts from humanoid robots to video games, in which it can result in players feeling uncomfortable or disconnected from the game, leading to a lack of immersion and potentially reducing the overall enjoyment. The phenomenon has been observed and described mostly through behavioural studies based on self-reported scales of uncanny feeling: however, there is still no consensus on its cognitive and perceptual origins, which limits our understanding of its impact on player experience. In this paper, we present a study aimed at identifying the mechanisms that trigger the uncanny response by collecting and analysing both self-reported feedback and EEG data

The Dead Walk

Monsters have always enjoyed a significant presence in the human imagination, and religion was instrumental in replacing the physical horror they engendered with that of a moral threat. Zombies, however, are amoral - their motivation purely instinctive and arbitrary, yet they are, perhaps, the most loathed of all contemporary monsters. One explanation for this lies in the theory of the uncanny valley, proposed by robotics engineer Masahiro Mori. According to the theory, we reserve our greatest fears for those things which seem most human, yet are not - such as dead bodies. Such a reaction is most likely a survival mechanism to protect us from danger and disease - a mechanism even more essential when the dead rise up and walk. From their beginnings zombies have reflected western societies' greatest fears - be they of revolutionary Haitians, women, or communists. In recent years the rise in the popularity of the zombie in films, books and television series reflects our fears for the planet, the economy, and of death itsel

Service Robots Rising:How Humanoid Robots Influence Service Experiences and Elicit Compensatory Consumer Responses

Interactions between consumers and humanoid service robots (HSRs; i.e., robots with a human-like morphology such as a face, arms, and legs) will soon be part of routine marketplace experiences. It is unclear, however, whether these humanoid robots (compared with human employees) will trigger positive or negative consequences for consumers and companies. Seven experimental studies reveal that consumers display compensatory responses when they interact with an HSR rather than a human employee (e.g., they favor purchasing status goods, seek social affiliation, and order and eat more food). The authors investigate the underlying process driving these effects, and they find that HSRs elicit greater consumer discomfort (i.e., eeriness and a threat to human identity), which in turn results in the enhancement of compensatory consumption. Moreover, this research identifies boundary conditions of the effects such that the compensatory responses that HSRs elicit are (1) mitigated when consumer-perceived social belongingness is high, (2) attenuated when food is perceived as more healthful, and (3) buffered when the robot is machinized (rather than anthropomorphized)

The Dead Walk

Monsters have always enjoyed a significant presence in the human imagination, and religion was instrumental in replacing the physical horror they engendered with that of a moral threat. Zombies, however, are amoral – their motivation purely instinctive and arbitrary, yet they are, perhaps, the most loathed of all contemporary monsters. One explanation for this lies in the theory of the uncanny valley, proposed by robotics engineer Masahiro Mori. According to the theory, we reserve our greatest fears for those things which seem most human, yet are not – such as dead bodies. Such a reaction is most likely a survival mechanism to protect us from danger and disease – a mechanism even more essential when the dead rise up and walk. From their beginnings zombies have reflected western societies’ greatest fears – be they of revolutionary Haitians, women, or communists. In recent years the rise in the popularity of the zombie in films, books and television series reflects our fears for the planet, the economy, and of death itsel

Treating Objects like Women: The Impact of Terror Management and Objectification on the Perception of Women's Faces

According to terror management theory, humans are threatened by the awareness of death and counter this threat by investing in cultural systems that make them feel like they are more than mortal animals. Based on this proposition, it has been argued that women's bodies pose a unique existential threat, as they remind humans of their similarity to other biological organisms. However, no research thus far has examined how death awareness impacts perceptual assessments of women. The current study examined the effect of heightened death-awareness on perceptions of women's faces, utilizing face-morphing techniques that create a range of artificial-to-real faces. Results indicated that following a death-awareness induction, participants perceived artificial female faces as less artificial, but not necessarily more attractive. MS did not predict perceptions of male faces. These results suggest that existential concerns about death have an impact on perceptual assessments of women

Empathy and Dyspathy with Androids: Philosophical, Fictional, and (Neuro)Psychological Perspectives

The fact that we develop feelings towards androids, i.e., objects with a humanlike appearance, has fascinated people since ancient times. However, as a short survey of the topic in history, science fiction literature and film shows, our emotional reactions towards them are ambivalent. On the one hand, we can develop feelings of empathy almost as we do with real human beings; on the other hand, we feel repulsion or dyspathy when those creatures show a very high degree of human likeness. Recently, Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori coined the term “uncanny valley” to refer to this effect. The aim of this essay is, first, to give an explanation as to why we feel empathy towards androids although we know that they do not have feelings themselves. This presupposes a perception-based concept of empathy which is going to be developed on the basis of some of Theodor Lipps’ ideas. The second question to be answered is why empathy with androids turns into dyspathy when they become very humanlike. As I will argue, this is due to a particular kind of interference between perception and the imagination when confronted with very humanlike objects. This makes androids quite special objects right at the divide between humans and non-humans. They are non-human, but we feel ill at ease when treating them as mere objects