The Robots are Coming! The Robots are Coming! Fear and Empathy for Artificial Entities

Social robots are proposed to be introduced into our everyday work and private lives in the near future. It is therefore increasingly important to research the facilitators and barriers of successful human-robot integration. Humanlike appearance in robots has been proposed as a way of ensuring pro-sociality and cooperation between robots and humans. Existing evidence suggests that humanlike robots are more readily attributed humanlike capacities and perception of mind. In turn, people have been found to have greater empathy for humanlike robots. However, humanlike design has also been linked to greater perception of evilness and potential to cause damage to humanity. The aim of the current thesis was to further explore these ambivalent emotions towards humanlike robots, and investigate the role of potential moderators. In both Study 1 and Study 2, participants were presented with images or robots of varying human likeness, as well accompanying sad scenarios. Measures of empathy and threat were taken, with the addition of facial electromyography (EMG) readings in Study 2. It was predicted, in alignment with previous literature, that human likeness would have a positive effect on both empathy and threat responses. It was further hypothesised that this effect would be moderated by social categorisations and attitudes. Study 1 manipulated the categorisation of the robot through changes in the phrasing of the scenarios, whereas Study 2 manipulated attitudes towards robots with a pre-experiment audio stimulus. In accordance with previous findings, it was found that more humanlike robots elicited greater empathic and threat responses. Other manipulations were not found to affect these relationships in either study. These results have considerable implications for existing human-robot interaction literature, and could help inform social robot designs for the future