Moral Uncanny Valley revisited – how human expectations of robot morality based on robot appearance moderate the perceived morality of robot decisions in high conflict moral dilemmas

In recent years a new sub-field of moral psychology has emerged: moral psychology of AI and robotics. In this field there are several outstanding questions on how robot appearance and other perceived properties of the robots influences the way their decisions are evaluated. Researchers have observed that robot decision are not treated identically to human decisions, even if their antecedents and consequences are identical to human decisions. To study this moral judgment asymmetry effect further, two studies with a series of high conflict moral dilemmas were conducted: Study 1 – which used photorealistic full body imagery -- revealed that utilitarian decisions by human or non-creepy (i.e., nice) looking robotic agents were less condemned than “creepy” (i.e., unease inducing) robots, whereas “creepy” robots received higher moral approval when making deontological decisions. Furthermore, an exploratory analysis demonstrated that the creepiest robot did not cause moral surprise or disappointment when making utilitarian decisions. However, Study 2 showed that mere symbolic representation of the agent’s face did not trigger the Moral Uncanny Valley (where decisions of creepy robots are perceived negatively), suggesting that the effect is dependent on the photorealistic appearance of the agent. These results are in tension with some previous findings in robot moral judgment literature. Future research should focus on creating standardized stimuli for studying moral decisions involving robots and elucidating the complex interactions between agent appearance, decision type, and pre-decision expectations. This work deepens our understanding of the relationship between a decision-making agent’s appearance and the moral judgment of their decisions. The findings have significant implications for the design and implementation of autonomous agents in morally charged situations

Zone out and your money flows away; go with the flow and your money might stay

Non peer reviewe

Yhteiskuntatieteillä voi ymmärtää adaptaatioita

Putte Wilhelmsson väittää kirjoituksessaan (Tieteessä tapahtuu 2/2010), ettei yhteiskuntatieteilijöillä ole käytössään välineitä ihmisten adaptaatioiden tutkimiseen. Hänen mukaansa adaptaatioiden tutkiminen vaatisi, että yhteiskuntatieteilijät ymmärtäisivät ja analysoisivat ihmistä biokemiallisella tasolla. Väite on virheellinen monella tasolla. Adaptaatioiden selvittäminen on hyvin vähän teknologista osaamista tai älynlahjoja vaativa laji, jossa voi päästä hyvinkin pitkälle perinteisin kulttuuriantropologisin, sosiologisin ja sosiaalipsykologisin menetelmin

Are Utilitarian/Deontological Preferences Unidimensional?

Utilitarian versus deontological inclinations have been studied extensively in the field of moral psychology. However, the field has been lacking a thorough psychometric evaluation of the most commonly used measures. In this paper, we examine the factorial structure of an often used set of 12 moral dilemmas purportedly measuring utilitarian/deontological moral inclinations. We ran three different studies (and a pilot) to investigate the issue. In Study 1, we used standard Exploratory Factor Analysis and Schmid-Leimann (g factor) analysis; results of which informed the a priori single-factor model for our second study. Results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis in Study 2 were replicated in Study 3. Finally, we ran a weak invariance analysis between the models of Study 2 and 3, concluding that there is no significant difference between factor loading in these studies. We find reason to support a single-factor model of utilitarian/deontological inclinations. In addition, certain dilemmas have consistent error covariance, suggesting that this should be taken into consideration in future studies. In conclusion, three studies, pilot and an invariance analysis, systematically suggest the following. (1) No item needs to be dropped from the scale. (2) There is a unidimensional structure for utilitarian/deontological preferences behind the most often used dilemmas in moral psychology, suggesting a single latent cognitive mechanism. (3) The most common set of dilemmas in moral psychology can be successfully used as a unidimensional measure of utilitarian/deontological moral inclinations, but would benefit from using weighted averages over simple averages. (4) Consideration should be given to dilemmas describing infants.Peer reviewe

Poker players with experience and skill are not “ill” – Exposing a discrepancy in measures of problem gambling

Many studies suggest that in poker, “amount of money wagered” and “time spent playing” are prominent predictors of problem gambling. These observations are in discord with anecdotal and empirical evidence. Due to the inherent skill component in poker, active players who play for long hours attempting to make a profit – sometimes by wagering large amounts of money – might be labeled as problem gamblers despite having high levels of well-being and financial agency. In three on-line correlative studies, we assessed the associations between poker experience, problem gambling (the South Oaks Gambling Screen [SOGS] and the Problem Gambling Severity Index [PGSI] scores) and various measures of social and emotional well-being, self-control and emotion regulation. Problem gambling severity predicted reduced well-being, self-control, and increased social anomie and detrimental emotion regulation. Experienced poker players reported high problem gambling severity, but none of the adverse consequences therein. Therefore, a discrepancy was exposed concerning the validity of SOGS and PGSI. We conclude that these measures may not be valid in assessing “problematic”/detrimental gambling in poker playing populations, especially in the case of experienced players, who play for long hours in order to make money– the concepts of problem gambling and poker experience seem to be disentangled.Peer reviewe

Manipulaation monet keinot

Vastine Putte Wilhelmssonin kirjoitukseen Harhakuvitelma, pyramidihuijaus ja Titaanien kohtaaminen (Tieteessä tapahtuu 4-5/2010)

Healthy Individuals’ Decision Making in Online Poker : Perspectives on Emotional Stability and Wellbeing

In our previous studies it has been found that a phenomenon labeled tilting is a form of moral anger. When players are in tilt they make a series of bad decisions, chase their losses and express anger by cursing their opponents. In the context of tilting, the players also report episodes of memory loss. Additionally, we also developed a scale that measures the level of a player's poker experience, and we found evidence to suggest that poker experience is associated with mature self-reflection skills. We also found that the likelihood of a poker player making the correct decision in poker decision making tasks increased as a function of self-reflection and poker experience. In Study 1 I found evidence supporting the hypothesis that the regulation of emotions is an important part of the skill set of poker players. Specifically, if poker players have read a story about betrayal where they are asked to take the position of the victim before they make their decisions in poker decision making tasks, they make mathematically worse decisions than those participants who have only read a control story. The effect was moderated by the presence of a pair of moving eyes placed on the screen, which were used as proxy for the social environment. The results support the hypothesis that tilting is related to moral anger, or at least some form of anger that seems consistent with the events taking place in the social context. In Study 2, I assessed the associations between the HEXACO personality inventory -revised and poker experience. I obtained evidence supporting the notion that emotional stability is positively associated with accumulated poker experience. In Study 3 I showed that poker experience does not seem to be correlated with emotional intelligence, selfishness, self-control problems, social alienation or lowered levels of life satisfaction. I also note that these measures correlate with instruments measuring problem gambling. However, I observed either no correlations, or correlations hinting towards health benefits, between these instruments and poker experience. I concluded that problem gambling instruments need further development Taken together our results indicate that there are numerous benefits in approaching the field of gambling studies from a non-clinical angle.Väitöskirja koostuu kolmesta osatutkimuksesta, jotka laajentavat aikaisempia tutkimuksiamme. Aikaisemmissa tutkimuksissamme osoitettiin että tilttaamiseksi nimetty ilmiö on moraalisen raivon muoto. Tilttaaminen on ilmiö, jossa pelaajat tekevät sarjan huonoja päätöksiä ja jahtaavat häviöitään ja ilmaisevat suuttumusta mm. kiroten kanssapelaajiaan. Tilttaamisen yhteydessä pelaajat ovat raportoineet myös muisti-katkoksia. Lisäksi kehitimme pokerikokemusmittarin ja löysimme todistusaineistoa, joka vittasi pokerikokemuksen olevan yhteydessä kypsiin itsereflektiotaipumuksiin. Huomasimme myös kokeneiden pelaajien tekevän sitä todennäköisemmin matemaattisesti oikeita päätöksiä, mitä korkeampi itsereflektiotaipumus heillä on. Väitöskirjani enimmäisessä artikkeleissa tulokset puoltavat hypoteesia jonka mukaan emootioiden hallinta rationaalisten päätösten tekemi-seksi on tärkeä osa pokerinpelaajan taitopatteristoa. Mikäli pokerinpelaajat olivat luke-neet suuttumusta aiheuttavan tarinan, jossa heidän piti asettua petoksen kohteeksi joutuneen ihmisen asemaan, tekivät he matemaattisesti huonompia ratkaisuja ratio-naalista päätöksentekoa edellyttävissä pokeripäätöksentekotehtävissä. Kyseinen ilmiö oli riippuvainen siitä tekivätkö pelaajat päätöksiään silloin kun näytöllä oli liikkuva silmäpari. Silmäpari toimii vastineena pokeripelin sosiaaliselle ympäristölle. Tulokset tukevat hypoteesia että tilttaamisessa olisi kyse moraalisesta raivosta Toisessa artikkelissa arvioimme HEXACO-PI-R persoonallisuusmittarin ja pokerikokemuksen välisiä yhteyksiä. Tulosten mukaan emotionaalinen tasapainoisuus on yhteydessä pokerikokemuksen kehittymiseen. Kolmannessa artikkelissa toteamme ettei pokerikokemus näytä olevan yhteydessä alhaiseen tunneälyyn, itsekkyyteen, itsekontrolliongelmiin, syrjäytyneisyy-teen tai alentuneeseen elämäntyytyväisyyteen. Samassa artikkelissa edellä mainitut ongelmat korreloivat ongelmapelaamista mittaavien instrumenttien kanssa ja ongelma-pelaaminen näyttää korreloivan pokerikokemuksen kanssa (joka ei kuitenkaan korreloi negatiivisten hyvinvointivaikutusten kanssa). Toteamme, että ongelmapelaamismittarei-ta pitänee vielä kehittää lisää

Individual Differences in Moral Disgust Do Not Predict Utilitarian Judgments, Sexual and Pathogen Disgust Do

The role of emotional disgust and disgust sensitivity in moral judgment and decision-making has been debated intensively for over 20 years. Until very recently, there were two main evolutionary narratives for this rather puzzling association. One of the models suggest that it was developed through some form of group selection mechanism, where the internal norms of the groups were acting as pathogen safety mechanisms. Another model suggested that these mechanisms were developed through hygiene norms, which were piggybacking on pathogen disgust mechanisms. In this study we present another alternative, namely that this mechanism might have evolved through sexual disgust sensitivity. We note that though the role of disgust in moral judgment has been questioned recently, few studies have taken disgust sensitivity to account. We present data from a large sample (N=1300) where we analyzed the associations between The Three Domain Disgust Scale and the most commonly used 12 moral dilemmas measuring utilitarian/deontological preferences with Structural Equation Modeling. Our results indicate that of the three domains of disgust, only sexual disgust is associated with more deontological moral preferences. We also found that pathogen disgust was associated with more utilitarian preferences. Implications of the findings are discussed.Peer reviewe

The Company You Keep : Personality and Friendship Characteristics

Studies on personality and friendship have focused on similarities between friends, while differences in friendship patterns have received less attention. We used data from the British Household Panel Survey data (N = 12,098) to investigate how people's personalities are related to various characteristics of their three closest friends. All personality traits of the five-factor model were associated with several friendship characteristics with effect sizes corresponding to correlations between .06 and .09. Openness was especially prominent and idiosyncratic; individuals with high (vs. low) openness were about 3% more likely to have friends who live further away, are of the opposite sex and another ethnicity, and whom they meet less often. Agreeableness and extroversion were related to more traditional friendship ties. Individuals with high agreeableness had known their friends for a longer time, lived close to them, and had more "stay-at-homes" among their friends.Peer reviewe

The dark triad and willingness to commit insurance fraud

We evaluated how the dark triad (DT) personality traits (Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, Narcissism) influence willingness to claim for insurance in an online setting. In two mTurk studies (Ns 344 and 699) we created realistic online insurance claim tasks where participants could file claims for insured household items they had supposedly broken. We predicted “fibbing” (i.e., overclaiming the item values) in these tasks using the DT traits. However, within Study 2, we included monetary incentives and situational factors relating to claiming—that is, whether the items were broken in anger, while drunk, or by sheer accident. In both studies all DT traits predicted fibbing, but the results were weak for psychopathy in Study 1, while in Study 2 psychopathy was the strongest individual predictor of fibbing. Our results help understand why certain people are willing to commit insurance fraud, and provide an opening for further interdisciplinary research on insurance and personality science.Peer reviewe