There’s More to Humanity Than Meets the Eye: Differences in Gaze Behavior Toward Women and Gynoid Robots

Based on evolutionary psychological theories, numerous eye-tracking studies have demonstrated how people visually perceive a potential mate in order to efficiently estimate the person’s mate value. Companies are currently working on sexualized robots that provide numerous human-like visual cues which foster the visual resemblance to humans. To gain more elaborated knowledge on how people react to sexualized robots compared with humans, the present study empirically investigated whether heterosexual males transfer deep-rooted evolutionary psychological processes of mate perception to human-like and machine-like sexualized robots. Moreover, we aimed to learn more about the processes of orienting responses toward human and non-human stimuli and about potential predictors of visual attention to robots. Therefore, we conducted an eye-tracking study in which 15 heterosexual men, 12 homosexual men, and 18 heterosexual women were confronted with stimuli showing women, human-like gynoid robots and machine-like gynoid robots. For the sample as a whole, there was no difference in the amount of time spent looking at the human and non-human breasts. However, the results for the heterosexual males supported the assumption that human breasts attract more visual attention than do the breast areas of human-like and machine-like robots. The pelvic region yielded an unexpected gaze pattern, as all participants spent more time looking at the robotic pelvic area than at the human one, with more visual attention paid to the machine-like robots than to the human-like robots. The results of the viewing times toward the head revealed that all participants had a stronger need to gain visual information about the human head in comparison to the robotic heads, underlining the importance of authenticity in terms of emotions and motivations that can only be decoded in humans. Moreover, the study showed that individuals more frequently switched their visual attention toward different body parts of the robots in comparison to the female stimuli, implying that non-human sexualized representations evoked a higher need for visual exploration

A New Design Paradigm for Secure Full-Duplex Multiuser Systems

We consider a full-duplex (FD) multiuser system where an FD base station (BS) is designed to simultaneously serve both downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) users in the presence of half-duplex eavesdroppers (Eves). The problem is to maximize the minimum (max-min) secrecy rate (SR) among all legitimate users, where the information signals at the FD-BS are accompanied with artificial noise to debilitate the Eves' channels. To enhance the max-min SR, a major part of the power budget should be allocated to serve the users with poor channel qualities, such as those far from the FD-BS, undermining the SR for other users, and thus compromising the SR per-user. In addition, the main obstacle in designing an FD system is due to the self-interference (SI) and co-channel interference (CCI) among users. We therefore propose an alternative solution, where the FD-BS uses a fraction of the time block to serve near DL users and far UL users, and the remaining fractional time to serve other users. The proposed scheme mitigates the harmful effects of SI, CCI and multiuser interference, and provides system robustness. The SR optimization problem has a highly nonconcave and nonsmooth objective, subject to nonconvex constraints. For the case of perfect channel state information (CSI), we develop a low-complexity path-following algorithm, which involves only a simple convex program of moderate dimension at each iteration. We show that our path-following algorithm guarantees convergence at least to a local optimum. Then, we extend the path-following algorithm to the cases of partially known Eves' CSI, where only statistics of CSI for the Eves are known, and worst-case scenario in which Eves can employ a more advanced linear decoder. The merit of our proposed approach is further demonstrated by extensive numerical results.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), 201

Jealousy 4.0? An empirical study on jealousy-related discomfort of women evoked by other women and gynoid robots

While first empirical studies on sexual aspects of human-robot interaction mostly focus on male users’ acceptance, there is no empirical research on how females react to robotic replications of women. To empirically investigate whether robots can evoke the same kind of jealousy-related discomfort as do other women, we conducted an online study in which 848 heterosexual female participants from Germany reacted to the idea that their partner had sexual intercourse with either another woman, a human-like female-looking robot, or a machinelike female-looking robot. The results revealed dimensions in which the jealousy-related discomfort was higher for female competitors compared to the robotic ones (e.g., discomfort caused by the idea of sexual intercourse),whereas in others the robots evoked the same or higher levels of jealousy-related discomfort (e.g., discomfort caused by feelings of inadequacy, discomfort caused by shared emotional and time resources). The variance in the discomfort regarding sexual interactions between one’s partner and robotic competitors could not be explained by personal characteristics (such as self-esteem, subjective physical attractiveness) but rather by technology-related variables (e.g., negative attitude towards robots, a tendency towards anthropomorphism) and the attitude towards sexual nonexclusivity in relationships. The study provides first empirical insights into a question which is of relevance for a responsible handling of sexualized technologies

Not Only the Lonely—How Men Explicitly and Implicitly Evaluate the Attractiveness of Sex Robots in Comparison to the Attractiveness of Women, and Personal Characteristics Influencing This Evaluation

While some theories, such as the Media Equation, suggest that men will evaluate sex robots to be attractive, other assumptions (e.g., biases of norm adherence) would contradict this hypothesis. Therefore, the present study aimed at empirically comparing men’s explicit and implicit evaluation of the (sexual) attractiveness of sex robots and women. At the same time, personal characteristics of the observer that might affect this evaluation were considered. An online survey (n = 229) and an affective priming experiment (n = 41) revealed that men rate women to be more attractive than robots if asked explicitly (=self-reported). However, this effect is not present when attractiveness is assessed implicitly (unbiased, directly). Moreover, affiliation-related traits such as loneliness, which have been assumed to be associated with the usage of sex dolls, are not related to the evaluation of attractiveness. Instead, a negative attitude towards robots is an important predictor

Listen to the Scientists: Effects of exposure to scientists and general media consumption on cognitive, affective and behavioral mechanisms during the COVID-19 pandemic

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, in an unprecedented amount, scientists around the globe engaged in science communication to provide first-hand epidemiological knowledge and information on preventive measures. Based on the extended parallel process model, the present work aimed to empirically investigate (N = 698) the impact of direct exposure to scientists in comparison to a general COVID-19 related media consumption. The results revealed that direct exposure to scientists positively affected recipients´ knowledge and self-efficacy. General media consumption on the other hand, positively affected perceived threat as well as fear and uncertainty. Both sources positively affected the adherence to protective measures

Social Reactions towards Speech Interfaces and the Influence of Mental Models

Krämer N, Szczuka JM, Kopp S. Social Reactions towards Speech Interfaces and the Influence of Mental Models. In: ACM, ed. CHI 2019 Workshop on "Mapping Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives for Understanding Speech Interface Interactions". 2019

Posting from the Past - A Longitudinal Study of the Potentials of Parasocial Interaction with a Historical Figure for History Education

Historical figures were increasingly brought onto Instagram providing insights into the past from a first-person perspective by nonverbally and verbally addressing followers in stories or posts. This type of representation is known for promoting parasocial interaction (PSI), the illusion of a face-to-face interaction with a media figure. Consequently, historical Instagram accounts may offer a novel platform for historical learning via PSI with historical figures. This longitudinal study aims to investigate PSI and actual interaction (e.g., liking, commenting) with the historical figure on social media and the resulting educational potentials: interest in and knowledge about the historical figure, and followers’ consciousness of the accounts’ fictionality and characteristics of the past. To investigate this, followers of the German historical Instagram account: ichbinsophiescholl, were surveyed at two time points (t1: N = 239; t2: N = 84). The findings revealed that followers’ actual interaction was positively related to the experience of PSI, which was in turn supported by their general interest in history. PSI did not increase over time but was positively associated with interest in the historical figure. Moreover, followers experiencing PSI were more aware of the historical characteristics of the account but less aware of its fictionality

How do children acquire knowledge about voice assistants? A longitudinal field study on children’s knowledge about how voice assistants store and process data

Szczuka JM, Strathmann C, Szymczyk N, Mavrina L, Krämer NC. How do children acquire knowledge about voice assistants? A longitudinal field study on children’s knowledge about how voice assistants store and process data. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction. 2022: 100460.Voice assistants (VAs) are available in the family context and are easy to interact with. Due to the opaqueness of these assistants, however, children in particular might be unaware of potential negative consequences (e.g., with regard to privacy). To gain a deeper understanding of children’s knowledge about VAs, of how to facilitate knowledge regarding VA technology (focusing here on parental interventions), and of how children’s knowledge and understanding affects their communicative behavior towards VAs (focusing here on telling a secret to the VA), we conducted a longitudinal field study with 16 families (N = 20 children). The emphasis was on differentiating between how VAs store and process data, as both aspects are important for a sophisticated usage but vary in how they are experienced or understood. The qualitative data demonstrated that children draw observable inferences from voice assistants’ behavior, which explains why children know more about how data is processed than about how it is stored or accessed. Our results indicate that parental interventions positively affect children’s understanding of data processing, but that this cannot be transferred to data storage, indicating the need for self-explaining systems. Lastly, knowledge about how data is stored negatively predicts the willingness to entrust a secret to the system, which underlines the importance of a basic understanding of how technologies work, also for younger users