Influence of perspective taking through robotic virtual agents on prosocial behavior

TL;DR

This study explores how perspective taking via virtual robots influences human prosocial behavior, finding that viewing a robot from the help-receiver perspective increases altruism towards the robot, but not towards humans.

Contribution

It demonstrates that perspective taking in robot interactions can enhance prosocial behavior towards robots, extending prior human-focused research to robotic agents.

Findings

Participants viewing the help-receiver perspective showed more altruism towards robots.

Perspective taking did not alter behavior towards human participants.

Robots' viewpoint influences human social responses in altruistic tasks.

Abstract

Perspective taking, which allows people to imagine another's thinking and goals, is known to be an effective method for promoting prosocial behaviors in human-computer interactions. However, most of the previous studies have focused on simulating human-human interactions in the real world by offering participants experiences related to various moral tasks through the use of human-like virtual agents. In this study, we investigated whether taking the perspective of a different robot in a robot-altruistic task would influence the social behaviors of participants in a dictator game. Our findings showed that participants who watched the help-receiver view exhibited more altruistic behaviors toward a robot than those who watched the help-provider view. We also found that, after watching robots from two different viewpoints in the task, participants did not change their behavior toward another participant.