AI Article Synopsis

  • Researchers conducted three experiments with 302 participants to investigate how people perceive humanoid robots—either as human-like or object-like—using an experimental method known as the inversion paradigm.
  • The findings showed that full-body humanoid robots elicited a "body-inversion effect," meaning they were processed similarly to human bodies, regardless of how human-like the robots appeared.
  • In contrast, only the faces of humanoid robots that resembled humans closely exhibited this inversion effect, suggesting that humans more easily anthropomorphize highly human-like robot faces compared to less human-like ones.

Article Abstract

Across three experiments (N = 302), we explored whether people cognitively elaborate humanoid robots as human- or object-like. In doing so, we relied on the inversion paradigm, which is an experimental procedure extensively used by cognitive research to investigate the elaboration of social (vs. non-social) stimuli. Overall, mixed-model analyses revealed that full-bodies of humanoid robots were subjected to the inversion effect (body-inversion effect) and, thus, followed a configural processing similar to that activated for human beings. Such a pattern of finding emerged regardless of the similarity of the considered humanoid robots to human beings. That is, it occurred when considering bodies of humanoid robots with medium (Experiment 1), high and low (Experiment 2) levels of human likeness. Instead, Experiment 3 revealed that only faces of humanoid robots with high (vs. low) levels of human likeness were subjected to the inversion effects and, thus, cognitively anthropomorphized. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings for robotic and psychological research are discussed.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9321781PMC
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0270787PLOS

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