This study examines facets of robot humanization, defined as how people think of robots as social and human-like entities through perceptions of liking, human-likeness, and rights entitlement. The current study investigates how different trait differences in robots (gender, physical humanness, and relational status) and participants (trait differences in past robot experience, efficacy, and personality) together influence humanization perceptions. Findings show that the robots’ features were less influential than participants’ individual traits. Specifically, participants’ prior real-life exposure to robots and perceived technology competence were positively related to robot humanization, while individuals with higher internal loci of control and negative evaluations of robots in media were less inclined to humanize robots. The implications of these findings for understanding the unfolding “relational turn” in human-machine communication are then considered: specifically, at present, it appears that technological features matter less than people’s ontological understanding of social robots in shaping their humanization perceptions.
Publication: International Journal of Social Robotics
Co-author: Kate Mays (former EMS MA and PhD student, currently assistant professor at University of Vermont)