A futuristic humanoid robot. Kahn et al. (2012) investigated children’s social and moral conceptions of a humanoid robot that was teleoperated to exhibit futuristic social capabilities. Ninety children (across 3 age groups: 9, 12 and 15) interacted with ATR’s Robovie in 15-minute sessions that ended when an experimenter interrupted Robovie’s turn in a game. Then, against Robovie’s stated moral objections (that it was unfair to Robovie, and caused psychological distress to Robovie), the experimenter put Robovie in a closet. Each participant was then engaged in a 50-minute structural-developmental interview.
Behavioral results showed that during the interaction sessions, all of the children engaged in physical and verbal social behaviors with Robovie. Based on the interview data, the majority of the children believed that Robovie had psychological attributes insofar as they said that Robovie was intelligent (79%), had interests (76%), can be sad (64%), and had feelings (60%). The majority of children also believed that Robovie was a social other insofar as they said that they enjoyed having Robovie show them around the lab (89%), might like to spend time with Robovie if they were lonely (84%), might go to Robovie for comfort if they were sad (55%), would feel like they would need to comfort Robovie if Robovie told them “I’m sad” (81%), could trust Robovie with …show more content…
They tend to be mixed with regard to the robot’s aliveness, but are more willing to see the humanoid robot in psychological, social, and some moral terms. Developmentally, the 15-year-olds were less likely to conceptualize Robovie as a psychological, social and moral other than the 9- and 12-year-olds, though it is unclear whether such attributions to robots simply disappear with age, as over half of the 15-year-olds in this study conceptualized Robovie in these