General Attitudes Towards Robots Scale (GAToRS): A New Instrument for Social Surveys

Psychometric scales are useful tools in understanding people's attitudes towards different aspects of life. As societies develop and new technologies arise, new validated scales are needed. Robots and artificial intelligences of various kinds are about to occupy just about every niche in human society. Several tools to measure fears and anxieties about robots do exist, but there is a definite lack of tools to measure hopes and expectations for these new technologies. Here, we create and validate a novel multi-dimensional scale which measures people's attitudes towards robots, giving equal weight to positive and negative attitudes. Our scale differentiates (a) comfort and enjoyment around robots, (b) unease and anxiety around robots, (c) rational hopes about robots in general (at societal level) and (d) rational worries about robots in general (at societal level). The scale was developed by extracting items from previous scales, crowdsourcing new items, testing through 3 scale iterations by exploratory factor analysis (Ns 135, 801 and 609) and validated in its final form of the scale by confirmatory factor analysis (N: 477). We hope our scale will be a useful instrument for social scientists who wish to study human-technology relations with a validated scale in efficient and generalizable ways.Peer reviewe

Moral psychology of sex robots : An experimental study − how pathogen disgust is associated with interhuman sex but not interandroid sex

The idea of sex with robots seems to fascinate the general public, raising both enthusiasm and revulsion. We ran two experimental studies (Ns = 172 and 260) where we compared people’s reactions to variants of stories about a person visiting a bordello. Our results show that paying for the services of a sex robot is condemned less harshly than paying for the services of a human sex worker, especially if the payer is married. We have for the first time experimentally confirmed that people are somewhat unsure about whether using a sex robot while in a committed monogamous relationship should be considered as infidelity. We also shed light on the psychological factors influencing attitudes toward sex robots, including disgust sensitivity and interest in science fiction. Our results indicate that sex with a robot is indeed genuinely considered as sex, and a sex robot is genuinely seen as a robot; thus, we show that standard research methods on sexuality and robotics are also applicable in research on sex robotics.Peer reviewe

Treatments approved, boosts eschewed : Moral limits of neurotechnological enhancement

In six vignette-based experiments, we assessed people's moral reactions towards various cognition-enhancing brain implants, including their overall approval and perceived fairness, as well as the dehumanization of brain-implanted agents. Across the domains of memory (Studies 1-4, 6), general intelligence (Study 5A), and emotional stability (Study 5B), people in general approved of alleviating ailments, and even of attaining optimal human performance, but expressed greater opposition towards superhuman levels of enhancement. Further analyses of individual differences indicated that the tendency to condemn transhumanist technologies, such as brain implants, was linked to sexual disgust sensitivity and the binding moral foundations - two characteristic correlates of a conservative worldview. In turn, exposure to science fiction was tied to greater approval of brain implants. We also examined potential idiosyncrasies associated with our stimulus materials and did not find reliable effects of any secondary factors on moral attitudes. Taken together, our studies reveal certain moral boundaries to neurotechnological enhancement, strong among those with conservative affective and moral dispositions but relaxed among those familiar with science fiction themes.Peer reviewe

Modeling levels of eco‐conscious awareness

We evaluate whether the feeling that all life is interconnected is associated with moral awareness of protecting the environment. We present a model in which different levels of awareness-awareness of self, other, and nature-are associated with environmental measures and moral awareness of environmental protection. Using path analysis (N = 634), we first evaluate how each level of awareness predicts the environmental measures. We then show that these associations are mediated by moral awareness of environmental protection and that moral awareness has an additional unique contribution as a predictor. Our results highlight the importance of different levels of awareness on attitudes and predispositions towards environmental protection. This research provides valuable insights into the relationship between interconnectedness, moral awareness, and environmentalism, offering a foundation for developing interventions and strategies aimed at fostering a more ecologically conscious society.Peer reviewe

The Dark Path to Eternal Life : Machiavellianism Predicts Approval of Mind Upload Technology

Mind upload, making a digital copy of one's brain, is a part of the transhumanistic dream of eternal life and the end of suffering. It is also perceived as a viable route toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). However, AI safety research has alerted to one major risk in creating AGI by mind upload: namely, that mind upload technology could appeal primarily to callous and selfish individuals who then abuse this technology for their personal gain'and, potentially, at a considerable cost to the welfare of humankind. Therefore, it is important to understand whether people's acceptance of mind upload is associated with pathological and/or antisocial traits. To this end, the present research examined whether individual differences in Dark Triad traits predict attitudes toward mind upload in a sample of 1007 English-speaking adults. A pre-registered structural equation model revealed that Machiavellianism (but not psychopathy) was associated with favorable views about mind upload, both directly and indirectly through utilitarian moral attitudes. These results therefore substantiate the concerns voiced by AI safety researchers'namely, that mind upload technology could be adopted disproportionately by individuals with an antisocial personality.Peer reviewe

Innocence over utilitarianism - Heightened Moral Standards for Robots in Rescue Dilemmas

Research in moral psychology has found that robots, more than humans, are expected to make utilitarian decisions. This expectation is found specifically when contrasting utilitarian action to deontological inaction. In a series of eight experiments (total N = 3752), we compared judgments about robots' and humans' decisions in a rescue dilemma with no possibility of deontological inaction. A robot's decision to rescue an innocent victim of an accident was judged more positively than the decision to rescue two people culpable for the accident (Studies 1-2b). This pattern repeated in a large-scale web survey (Study 3, N = similar to 19,000) and reversed when all victims were equally culpable/innocent (Study 5). Differences in judgments about humans' and robots' decisions were largest for norm-violating decisions. In sum, robots are not always expected to make utilitarian decisions, and their decisions are judged differently from those of humans based on other moral standards as well.Peer reviewe