Work

Social Cognition Unbound

Year: 2010

Type: article

Abstract: People conceive of wrathful gods, fickle computers, and selfish genes, attributing human characteristics to a variety of supernatural, technological, and biological agents. This tendency to anthropomorphize nonhuman agents figures prominently in domains ranging from religion to marketing to computer science. Perceiving an agent to be humanlike has important implications for whether the agent is capable of social influence, accountable for its actions, and worthy of moral care and consideration. Three primary factors-elicited agent knowledge, sociality motivation, and effectance motivation-appear to account for a significant amount of variability in anthropomorphism. Identifying these factors that lead people to see nonhuman agents as humanlike also sheds light on the inverse process of dehumanization, whereby people treat human agents as animals or objects. Understanding anthropomorphism can contribute to a more expansive view of social cognition that applies social psychological theory to a wide variety of both human and nonhuman agents.

Source: Current Directions in Psychological Science

DOI: 10.1177/0963721409359302

Authors: Adam Waytz, Nicholas Epley, John T. Cacioppo

Institutions: Harvard University, University of Chicago

Language: English

Topic: Social Robot Interaction and HRI

Subfield: Social Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Institute on Aging

Awards: Social Isolation, Loneliness, Health &the Aging Process, Social Regulation of Gene Expression, The Integrative Social Relations, Health and Aging Project