PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Researchers continue to devise creative ways to explore the extent to which people perceive robots as social agents, as opposed to objects. One such approach involves asking participants to inflict \'harm\' on a robot. Researchers are interested in the length of time between the experimenter issuing the instruction and the participant complying, and propose that relatively long periods of hesitation might reflect empathy for the robot, and perhaps even attribution of human-like qualities, such as agency and sentience. In a recent experiment, we adapted the so-called \'hesitance to hit\' paradigm, in which participants were instructed to hit a humanoid robot on the head with a mallet. After standing up to do so (signaling intent to hit the robot), participants were stopped, and then took part in a semi-structured interview to probe their thoughts and feelings during the period of hesitation. Thematic analysis of the responses indicate that hesitation not only reflects perceived socialness, but also other factors including (but not limited to) concerns about cost, mallet disbelief, processing of the task instruction, and the influence of authority. The open-ended, free responses participants provided also offer rich insights into individual differences with regards to anthropomorphism, perceived power imbalances, and feelings of connection toward the robot. In addition to aiding understanding of this measurement technique and related topics regarding socialness attribution to robots, we argue that greater use of open questions can lead to exciting new research questions and interdisciplinary collaborations in the domain of social robotics.
摘要：
研究人员继续设计创造性的方法来探索人们将机器人视为社会代理人的程度。而不是物体。其中一种方法是要求参与者对机器人造成“伤害”。研究人员对实验者发出指令和参与者遵守之间的时间长度感兴趣，并提出相对较长的犹豫可能反映了对机器人的同情，甚至可能是人类特质的归因，比如代理和情感。在最近的一个实验中,我们适应了所谓的“犹豫”范式，其中参与者被指示用木槌击中人形机器人的头部。站起来这样做（信号意图击中机器人）后，参与者被阻止，然后参加了半结构化的采访，以探讨他们在犹豫期间的想法和感受。对回应的专题分析表明，犹豫不仅反映了感知的社会性，还有其他因素，包括(但不限于)对成本的担忧，木槌怀疑,任务指令的处理，以及权威的影响。开放式的，提供的自由回答参与者还提供了关于拟人化的个体差异的丰富见解，感知到的权力失衡，以及对机器人的连接感觉。除了帮助理解这种测量技术和有关机器人社会属性的相关主题外，我们认为，更多地使用开放问题可以导致令人兴奋的新研究问题和跨学科合作领域的社会机器人。
