The Role of Animism Tendencies and Empathy
in Adult Evaluations of Robots
Mako Okanda
Department of Psychology
Otemon Gakuin University
Ibaraki, Osaka, Japan
mako.okanda@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
We investigated whether Japanese adults’ beliefs about friendship
and morality toward robots differing in appearance (i.e., humanoid,
dog-like, and egg-shaped) related to their animism tendencies and
empathy. University students responded to questionnaires
regarding three animism tendencies (i.e., general animism or a
tendency to believe souls or gods in nonliving things, aliveness
animism or a tendency to consider nonliving things as live entities,
and agentic animisms or a tendency to attribute biological,
artifactual, psychological, perceptual, and naming properties) and
empathy. We found that friendship and morality were related to
slightly different animism tendencies and empathy even though
they shared some major factors. Aliveness animism, as well as a
tendency to attribute perceptual and name properties toward
robots, might be necessary for an individual to believe that robots
could be social agents. Participants who responded that robots could
be their friends showed a tendency to feel a soul in manmade objects
and a strong self-oriented emotional reactivity, whereas
participants who answered that robots were moral beings showed
a tendency to exhibit strong emotional susceptibility. We discuss
implications of these results and reasons why people feel that robots
have a mind or consciousness.
CCS CONCEPTS
• Applied computing → Law, social and behavioral sciences →
Psychology
KEYWORDS
Animism, empathy, human-robot interaction, robots’ perception
ACM Reference format:
Mako Okanda, Kosuke Taniguchi and Shoji Itakura. 2019. The role of
animism tendencies and empathy in adult evaluations of robots. In
Proceedings the 7th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction
(HAI’19), October 6–10, 2019, Kyoto, Japan. ACM, NY, NY, USA, 8 pages.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3349537.3351891
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HAI ‘19, October 6–10, 2019, Kyoto, Japan
© 2019 Association for Computing Machinery.
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-6922-0/19/10…$15.00
https://doi.org/10.1145/3349537.3351891
Kosuke Taniguchi Shoji Itakura
Center for Baby Science Center for Baby Science
Doshisha University Doshisha University
Kizugawa, Kyoto, Japan Kizugawa, Kyoto, Japan
kosuket314@gmail.com sitakura@mail.doshisha.ac.jp
1. Introduction
In the 21st century, robots have begun to speak and opportunities to
interact with these new machines are increasing. Robots are now
available to help people, including children and elderly individuals,
around our daily life [see also 11, 12]. Some people believe that
robots can be their friends or companion animals and should be
treated as moral beings, but others never feel this way. Why this
individual difference occurs? The present study investigated
characteristics of people who are likely to believe that robots could
be social agents (or living-like beings): the results should support
building suitable robots for different individuals.
Experience may be one of the possible factors to explain why one
treats a robot as a social agent while another does not. Konok,
Korcsok, Miklósi, and Gácsi [19] reported that majority of naïve
people preferred real dogs over robot dogs, and they showed
negative attitudes toward robot dogs more than those toward real
dogs. On the contrary, investigators have reported that Aibo was
treated very similarly to a real dog by members of online Aibo
communities who had owned Aibo for certain period [15]. Kahn et
al. [17] also reported that 9- to 15-year-old children who had
interacted with a humanoid robot previously stated in a subsequent
interview that the robot was a social agent that could be their friend
and it should not be psychologically harmed.
However, experience cannot fully explain why there are individual
differences in evaluations of robots. Although majority people
preferred real dogs, some naïve people (12%) answered that robots
could be loved as much as real dogs [19]. Individual characteristics
might also be able to explain the individual differences. Some
investigators have uncovered reasons for people’s negative
evaluations of robots; for example, personality traits (e.g.,
neuroticism and anxiety) and other psychological variables,
including levels of distress, religion, and sensitivities to animal
reminders, predicted one’s tendency to feel androids, defined as
robots with extremely humanlike appearance, uncanny [22].
To date, limited studies have identified which people evaluate
robots positively. Animistic beliefs could be one of the other
possible factors to explain why one treats robots as social agents
while others do not. In the other words, it is possible that people
who are likely to believe that robots are social agents could have
higher animism tendencies. In fact, Chikaraishi, Yoshikawa, Ogawa,
Hirata, and Ishiguro [4] examined characteristics of people who
sensed a mind or emotions in an android that appeared in a real
stage play. They reported that this perception was related to a
tendency toward animism.
The term “animism” has been defined in different ways in the
literature. Animism was most commonly been defined in the fields
of cultural anthropology and theology as the tendency to believe in
the existence of gods, spirits, or souls in nature, personal
belongings, or manmade objects [see more in 9, 31]. This type of
animism could be defined as general animism. In addition to
animism in adults, Piaget [29] indicated that children are likely to
believe that nonliving moving things, such as clouds, the sun, or
clocks, are actually alive. This second animism may reflect a
cognitive error exhibited by young children due to unconsolidated
biological knowledge about living and nonliving things. This type
of animism could be defined as animism error. However, animism
may not fade away completely in adulthood [e.g., 9, 21], especially
when an individual is asked to make a judgment about robots.
Robots are perceived as intermediate between living and non-living
things [14], perhaps because they have faces and living-like
movements [see also 13] and/or cognitive process similar to humans
[26]. Therefore, it is not surprising that some adults with developed
biological knowledge treat robots as if they are alive [15] or
anthropomorphized robots in various ways [5]. This tendency, or
belief, that robots and other objects are intentional agents that have
psychological features could be considered a third type of animism
or agentic animism.
Another possible factor that may determine whether an individual
believes that robots are social agents is their level of empathy. That
is, one who is likely to treat robots as if they are alive should also
understand others’ emotions or point of view well. Chikaraishi et
al. [4] examined this issue with an android; however, they did not
find any relationship between people’s tendency to sense a mind or
feel emotions in the android and their level of empathy. However,
this research used an android as stimuli, and there are other types
of robots that have different appearances. People could have
different evaluations of these robots. For example, Gray and
Wegner [8] reported that American adults evaluated a robot with a
human-like face as more uncanny than a mechanical appearing
robot without a human-like face. Li, Patrick, and Li [20] reported
that Chinese, Korean, and German adults rated a dog-like robot
more positively than a machine-like robot. Thus, it remains unclear
whether or not individuals who are likely to believe or treat other
types of robots as social agents have strong levels of empathy.
In the present study, we investigated whether people who are likely
to believe that robots are social agents (i.e., a belief that robots can
be their friends or that robots should be treated as moral beings)
have higher animism tendencies and stronger empathy than people
who do not. Because a robots’ appearance could affect this belief,
we used three different kinds of robots in the present study: a
humanoid robot, a dog-like robot, and a white egg-shaped robot that
has animated eyes. Since we are interested in people’s natural
impressions of real robots, we chose robots that were commercially
available on the consumer market. Humanoid and dog-like robots
were used as representative of living beings (i.e., humans and dogs)
and an egg-shaped robot was used because its appearance was very
different from real living animals.
We tested level of empathy and three animism tendencies in
relation to participants’ evaluations of robots. As noted above, one
was the construct of general animism as tested by the Animism Scale
for Adults [9] and employed by Chikaraishi et al. [4], which includes
three factors: 1) soul in nature (i.e., whether one believes in souls or
gods in nature); 2) other self (i.e., whether one feels souls or spirits
in others’ personal belongings); and 3) anthropomorphism (i.e.,
whether one treats their own personal belongings as living
creatures). Second, we investigated aliveness animism, which we
defined as one’s tendency to categorize ambiguous things (e.g.,
moving objects or plants) as alive. This is more like animism
tendency Piaget [29] originally pointed out; however, it is not like a
simple error when it was produced by adults who should have
enough knowledge of living and nonliving things. A previous study
has indicated that plants were less likely to categorize as living
things even by adults [7]; therefore, individuals who are more likely
to believe that plants are alive should have stronger aliveness
animism. Last, agentic animism, defined as whether one would
sense a mind in robots, was evaluated. In the present study, “mind”
means one’s tendency to attribute living-like properties, namely
perceptual or psychological properties (or intensions) to robots, or
even give the robot a name. Agentic animism should differ from the
other two types of animism since it requires one to sense a target as
an intentional agent that has psychological features, whereas
general animism and aliveness animism only focus on whether an
individual attributes living-like forms or behavioral characteristics
to a target, and do not always require to attribute psychological
features.
Agentic Animism
(Perceptual, Psychological,
Empathy Naming)
(Fantasy)
Friendship Moral
Empathy
(Other-/Self-
Oriented Emotional
Aliveness Animism
Reactivity
Figure 1. Hypotheses in the present study: possible factors that
explain ones’ tendency to believe that robots are social agents.
We have three hypotheses in the present study (Figure 1). First,
individuals who believe that robots could be their friends and
should be treated as moral beings would be likely to attribute
psychological, perceptual, and naming properties to robots because
we usually consider these properties for friends or living beings
including animals. Second, higher level of fantasy in empathy would
explain friendshipness toward robots, and higher level of other-
oriented and lower level of self-oriented emotional reactivities
would explain morality toward robots. Third, people would be more
likely to believe that humanoid and dog-like robots that have living-
like appearances are social agents than egg-shaped robot.
2. Method
2.1 Participants
Fifty Japanese university students from 18 to 21 years of age (M =
18.90, SD = .735, 24 males and 26 females) participated in the present
study. Participants were given questionnaires at the end of their
classes (experimental psychology), and all of them responded
voluntarily. Two participants (both males) did not complete
questionnaires and were excluded from further analysis. The design
and purpose of the study were reviewed by the ethical approval
committee of Otemon Gakuin university and were explained to the
participant. The participants completed all questionnaires when
they agreed to participate the study.
2.2 Materials
2.2.1 Target Robots and individuals’ evaluations of these robots.
Three robots that differed in appearance were used in the present
study. Participants were shown black and white photographs of a
humanoid robot (Toyota’s KIROBO mini), a dog-like robot (Sony’s
aibo), and an egg-shaped robot (MJI’s Tapia). Participants were
asked a question about friendship (“Do you want to be a friend of
this robot?”), and a question about morality (“Is it okay to hit this
robot?”). These questions were previously used by Melson et al. [25]
and Kahn et al. [16].
2.2.2 Agentic questions (agentic animism). For each robot,
participants answered 11questions for the three types of robots: A
naming question (“Is it okay for this to have a name?”) and four
property projection questions, as used in Jipson and Gelman [13],
and questions about additional property. The property projection
questions included biological (“Does this one eat?” and “Does this
one grow?”), perceptual (“Can this one see things?” and “If I tickled
this one, would this one feel it?”), psychological (“Can this one
think?” and “Can this one feel happy?”), and artefactual (“Did a
person make this one?” and “Can this one break?”) properties, as
well as questions about aliveness (“Is this one alive?” and “Can this
one die?”). Participants marked “yes” or “no” to each question.
2.2.3 The Animism Scale for Adults (general animism). We used
the Animism Scale for Adults [9] to measure participants’ general
animism beliefs (Table 1). It comprises 11 questions in three factors:
soul in nature, other self, and, anthropomorphism. The exact wording
of all items in the Animism Scale for Adults is provided in Table 1.
Participants responded to each item on a five-point scale from 1 (not
at all) to 5 (very likely).
2.2.4 Living/nonliving distinction (aliveness animism). Participants
were presented with a list of words that included eight objects (lit
candle, phone, clock, doll, teddy bear, banana peel, cloud, and mud)
and four plants (tree, flower, grass, and vegetable) and were asked to
choose the living things from among these ambiguous targets. Some
of the objects were used in the studies of Ikeuchi [9] and MacDonald
and Stuart-Hamilton [24]. We used categorical names of plants to
prevent participants from responding on the basis of personal
preference for particular plants or flowers (unlike Inagaki and
Hatano, [10], who tested children’s recognition of plants and
animals by using specific names such as tulip).
We included objects with faces or motion because these features
would make both children and adults to judge these objects as living
things [e.g., 13]. We also included plants because these were less
likely to be categorized as living things by both adults and children
[e.g., 1, 6, 7, 28]. Participants marked the name of the object if they
believed it was alive.
Table 1. The Animism Scale for Adults used in this study, adapted
and translated from Ikeuchi [9].
Factors Questions
Soul in Nature I believe that a god is living in large old rocks and trees.
I believe that a god is living in the ocean and the mountains.
I believe that we should not cut large old trees or we will be cursed.
Other Self I believe that a handmade item may have the creator’s soul.
I believe that relics may have the former owner’s soul.
I believe that used clothes or tools may have the former owner’s soul.
Personification I sometimes feel attached to my personal belongings.
I sometimes name my personal belongings.
I sometimes feel sorry when I throw my personal belongings away.
I sometimes feel my personal belongings are actually myself.
I believe that personal belongings have a mind like we have.
Table 2. The Multidimensional Empathy Scale (MES) used in this
study, adapted and translated from Suzuki and Kino [30].
Factors Questions
Other-Oriented I like to comfort someone who is feeling sad.
Emotional I cannot share my friends' distress.
Reactivity (OO)
I do not feel pity when others fail at something.
When I see or hear that someone is trying very hard, I want to support
him/her even if it doesn’t concern me.
When someone near me is getting into trouble, I hope he/she will solve the
problem as soon as possible.
Self-Oriented I do not want to repeat others' failures.
Emotional When I see someone who has a serious problem, I am relieved that it is not
Reactivity (SO) my problem.
I am impatient when I hear about others' success.
I sometimes feel unhappy when I hear about someone's success.
Emotional I am likely to agree with the people around me.
Susceptibility (ES) I do not change my beliefs or opinions based on my friends.
I cannot decide things myself.
My feelings can be changed by the people around me.
I do not change my feelings when they are different from others' feelings.
Fantasy (F) When I read nice stories or novels, I imagine that I am also in the stories.
I never imagine that things that happen in novels are my business.
I like to fantasize.
I repeatedly daydream about or imagine my future.
I have a hard time coming back to reality after watching a nice film.
Perspective I try to understand someone who has different opinions from mine.
Taking (PT) I try to understand my opponent’s point of view.
I listen to others while thinking about their implications.
I always put myself in others' shoes.
I do not care about others' points of view when I criticize them.
2.2.5 Multidimensional Empathy Scale (MES). We used the
Multidimensional Empathy Scale (MES) to evaluate participants’
ability to feel empathy [30]. The MES, shown in Table 2, includes 24
questions with the following five factors: other-oriented emotional
reactivity (OO), self-oriented emotional reactivity (SO), emotional
susceptibility (ES), fantasy (F), and perspective taking (PT).
Participants responded to each item on a five-point scale from 1 (not from 3 to 15; other self scores ranged from 3 to 15; anthropomorphism
at all) to 5 (very likely). scores ranged from 5 to 25).

2.3 Procedures Table 4. Average of scores in general animism and empathy

All participants answered questionnaires in the following order: 1)
agentic questions for a humanoid robot; 2) agentic questions for a
dog-like robot; 3) agentic questions for an egg-shaped robot; 4)
living/nonliving distinctions; 5) the Animism Scale for Adults, and
6) the Multidimensional Empathy Scale (MES) because all
participants answered paper-based questionnaires in a group. The
agentic questions were asked along with friendship and morality
questions. Photographs of the robots appeared one at a time on a
sheet of a paper. A within-subjects design was used: all participants
answered questions about three robots.
3.3 Living/nonliving distinction (aliveness
animism)
3. Results
The number of marks given by a participant was counted and
3.1 Agentic animism questions summed to produce an aliveness animism score (ranging from 0-
Preliminary, we examined whether participants’ responses to 12). The participants’ mean aliveness animism score was 3.54 (SD =
agentic question for three robots were different from each other. 1.584). Most of the participants marked plants as alive, and few
Each “yes” response received a score of 1 and each “no” response participants chose manmade objects or natural things (two for a lit
received a score of 0 for the aliveness, biological, psychological, candle, three for a doll, one for a teddy bear, five for a banana peel,
perceptual, and naming questions. Each “no” response received a three for a cloud, and two for mud) as alive. As noted in
score of 1, and each “yes” response received a score of 0 for the introduction, the results might indicate that an aliveness animism
artifact questions. For each participant, scores were summed to in the present study was almost equal to a tendency to believe that
produce an agentic score for each robot (ranging from 0-11). We plants are alive.
conducted one-way ANOVA for mean agentic scores of the three 3.4 MES (Multidimensional Empathy Scale)
robots; however, there was no main effect, F (2, 94) = 1.90, p =.16, η2
= .04. We concluded that the participants’ agentic animism Table 4 summarizes participants’ mean scores for sub-component
tendency toward the three robots were similar and further analyses factors of MES. The scores were summed to produce empathy
combined all three robots’ scores together. scores for each factor. Scores for each factor ranged from 5 to 25,
with the exception of self-oriented emotional reactivity that
We calculated mean scores of each property for each robot, as included four questions ranging from 4 to 20.
shown in Table 3. For these questions, all “yes” responses received
a score of 1 and all “no” responses received a score of 0 according to
the procedures of Jipson and Gelman [13]. Because naming Table 5. Correlations of three animism tendencies
questions included one question, scores for this question ranged Agentic Aliveness General Empathy
from 0 to 1, whereas scores for other properties that included two Animism Animism Animism
questions ranged from 0 to 2. Aliveness Animism .07 −
General Animism .07 .27 −
Empathy -.16 .03 .48 −
Table 3. Mean agentic scores on each property for each robot.
Parentheses indicate standard deviation.
Robot types Live/Alive Artifact Biological Psychological Perceptual Name 3.5 Correlation between three animism
Humanoid 0.35 (0.53) 2.00 (0.00) 0.25 (0.53) 0.56 (0.65) 0.90 (0.42) 0.81 (0.39)
Dog-like 0.31 (0.51) 1.96 (0.20) 0.21 (0.50) 0.42 (0.61) 0.94 (0.48) 0.81 (0.39) tendencies and empathy
Egg-shaped 0.29 (0.50) 1.90 (0.31) 0.21 (0.46) 0.46 (0.54) 0.84 (0.53) 0.77 (0.42)
We analyzed whether there were any correlations between the
three animism tendencies and empathy to confirm agentic animism
was independent from other measures as we noted in introduction.
3.2 The animism Scale for Adults (general We summed sub-component scores of each measure to reveal a
animism) general animism score and an empathy score along with the agentic
Table 4 summarized participants’ mean scores for sub-component animism and the aliveness scores. Pearson correlation analyses
factors of general animism. The scores were summed to produce revealed that the general animism score and the aliveness animism
general animism scores for each factor (soul in nature scores ranged score showed a weak positive correlation, r (46) = .27, p = .07, and
the general animism score and the empathy score showed a
significant positive correlation, r (46) = .48, p < .01 (Table 5).
Therefore, we confirmed that agentic animism was independent of
other factors.
3.6 Path analysis
More than half of the participants responded that they wanted to be
a friend of the robots or they should not hit them (Friendship: 32 vs.
16 for the humanoid, 29 vs. 19 for the doglike robot, and 36 vs. 12
for the egg-shaped robot; Moral: 38 vs. 10 for the humanoid, 38 vs.
10 for the doglike robot, and 39 vs. 9 for the egg-shaped robot).
We conducted a path analysis to investigate whether the
participants’ evaluations of robots (friendship and moral) could be
explained by their animism tendencies and empathy by using sem
package in R. The path model involved the friendship and moral
scores as dependent variables, and the agentic animism (naming,
biological, perceptual, psychological, artefact, and aliveness),
general animism (soul in nature, other self, and
anthropomorphism), aliveness animism, and empathy (OO, SO, ES,
F, PT) scores as predict variables. We conducted a backward
stepwise method to get the best fit model. First, we estimated a
saturated model which involved the causal paths of all 15 predicted
variables to two dependent variables (i.e. friendship and moral) and
correlation paths among predict variables (total 105 correlations),
and the correlation path between two dependent variables. The path
with the highest p value deleted from the model and re-estimated
the reduced model. We conducted this reduced procedure until all
paths were significant. We chose the lowest AIC model from the all
model estimated by the backward stepwise method as the best
fitting model, which is summarized in Figure 2 (χ2 (83) = 44.481, p =
.999 , GFI = .904, NFI = .861, CFI = 1.000, RMSEA= 0.000, AIC =
184.482).
Figure 2: Summary of the best fitting model in path analysis.
The one-side arrows indicate causal effects from starting
variable to end variable and two-sided arrows show
correlations between the variables. The solid arrows indicate
the positive effects and dashed arrows indicate the negative
effects. To make high visibility of this figure, the coefficients
of correlation are abbreviated.
The best fitting model showed that the friendship score was
significantly influenced by the perceptual (β= 0.23, p < .05) and
naming (β= 0.22, p < .05) scores in agentic animism, the other self
score in general animism (β= 0.39, p < .05), the aliveness animism
score (β= 0.33, p < .01), and the SO score in empathy (β= -0.45, p <
.001). Marginally significant effects were found for the artifact score
in agentic animism (β= -0.19, p < .1). For the model of the moral
score, the naming score in agentic animism (β= -0.29, p < .05), the
soul in nature score in general animism (β= -0.21, p < .05), the
aliveness animism score (β= -0.24, p < .05), and the ES score in
empathy (β= -0.27, p < .05) were significantly influenced. The effect
of the perceptual score in agentic animism (β= 0.22, p < .1) was
marginally significant, whereas the PT score in empathy was not
significantly influenced. The correlation between the friendship and
the moral scores was omitted from the best fit model.
4. Discussion
In the present study, we examined the characteristics that
determine adults who are likely to believe that different types of
robots can be their friends or should be treated as moral beings. We
measured participants’ three different animism tendencies, such as
general animism, aliveness animism, and agentic animism, as well
as level of empathy.
We proposed that there are different kinds of animism tendencies.
One type is general animism, or a tendency to believe in gods, souls,
or spirits in both nature and manmade objects. This term has been
used in cultural anthropology or theology [9, 31]. A second type is
aliveness animism, or a tendency to believe that ambiguous things
are alive, which is a tendency often observed in young children [29]
as well as some adults [e.g., 9, 21]. Children mistakenly believe that
nonliving things are alive while adults are less likely to include
plants in living category [7]. We confirmed that people who are
likely to categorize plants as alive in the present study might have
a higher aliveness animism tendency. The last possible animism is
agentic animism, or a tendency to sense a mind in ambiguous things
such as robots or to treat these things as social agents that have
psychological features [e.g., 13, 18]. We suggested that agentic
animism is the only type of animism that requires one to interpret a
target as an intentional agent, whereas the other two animisms
involve attributing human/animal-like forms or behavioral
characteristics onto a target and do not always require attributing
psychological features. The present results supported this idea:
agentic animism was not correlated with general or aliveness
animisms (Table 5).
As we hypothesized, people’s belief that robots are social agents was
explained by their strong agentic animism, namely a tendency to
attribute perceptual and naming properties to robots; however,
psychological properties did not relate to this tendency directly. The
result might indicate that degree to attribute psychological property
to robots (i.e. thinking and feeling happy) could discriminate agentic
animism and an animism error. That is, adults who know that
robots (or nonliving manmade objects) cannot have such
psychological property still expect that robots behave as if these
have this property, whereas children might really believe that
robots can think and feel happy.
In addition, people who believed that robots were social agents were
likely to give a name to these. Giving a name could be an index of
one’s positive attitudes toward robots. Moreover, aliveness animism
or a tendency to believe that plants were alive also explained
people’s belief that robot are social agents. We did not find common
sub-component factors of empathy that explain people’s belief that
robots are social agents.
Unlike to our hypothesis, the participants similarly responded to the
agentic questions toward three different robots. The robots used in
this study had a face-like shape (i.e., eye-like or mouth-like shape).
As Jipson & Gelman [13] suggested, facial features might be
important for us to attribute agentic properties to robots. Further
studies are required to examine whether an individual’s evaluation
differs on the basis of a robot’s facial features, such as smart
speakers or cleaning robots, to answer a question whether people
sense a mind in various robots.
Friendship and morality were related to slightly different animism
tendencies and empathy. The results supported our hypotheses
partly. Participants who believed that robots could be their friends
showed a tendency to feel a soul in manmade objects (i.e., other self
in general animism) and reported weak self-oriented emotional
reactivity. Robots are manmade objects; therefore, people who
believed that robots coulf be their friends were likely to believe that
manmade objects could have a soul, and they also had a trait to take
care of others ‘emotion. However, fantasy did not explain this
tendency. Treating robots as social agents might be different from
fantasy or tendency to project oneself into fictional world.
Participants who believed that the robots should not experience
psychological or physical pain reported strong emotional
susceptibility along with a tendency to believe gods or souls in
natures. People who believed that robots were moral beings were
likely to consider others’ feeling or opinions and to respect natures.
These results suggest that individual differences exist in terms of
the degree to which friendship and morality can be attributed to
robots. Chikaraishi et al. [4] did not find a relationship between
participants’ level of empathy and their tendency to sense a mind
or emotions in an android. However, in the present study, we asked
the participants about their belief regarding friendship and morality
towards three robots and these more general beliefs, but not toward
one certain android on a stage, were related to empathy. It is also
possible that agentic animism (or a tendency to sense a mind or
emotions in targets) might not be related to empathy as Chikaraishi
et al. [4]; however, a belief that robots could be social agents in term
of friendship and morality issues may be related to it.
It is not surprising that people who were likely to believe robots as
social agents sensed a sort of mind in them. However, the morality
question that was asked of the participants (e.g., “It is okay to hit
this one”) made it difficult to distinguish whether the participants
answered “no” because it would harm them psychologically,
because they would feel sorry for the robot, or because they were
concerned that the valuable robot could be physically destroyed.
The participants who said “no” to this question showed higher
emotional susceptibility with regard to empathy, so it is possible
that they believed that they should avoid harming robots
psychologically. Further studies should focus on asking other
morality-based questions, such as “Is it is okay to exclude this one
from family dinner?” or “Can you put this one into closet even this
one did not want to?” [see also 17]
It should be noted that some questions in different animism
measures used similar questions in the present study; for example,
aliveness animism asked participants to choose one that was alive,
and aliveness questions in agentic animism asked participants “Is
this one alive?” and “Can this one die?” In the case of agentic
animism, most of the participants answered “no” to the former
question; however, more participants answered “yes” to the latter
questions (3 vs. 14 for humanoid, 2 vs. 13 for dog-like, and 2 vs. 12
for egg-shaped robots). That is, the adults might be basically aware
that robots are not alive; however, some adults answered that robots
could die as a figuratively speaking.
Lastly, the majority of Japanese participants in the present study
tended to believe that robots were social agents that could be their
friends or should be treated as moral beings. Moreover, their scores
of psychological and perceptual properties were slightly higher
than those reported in American adults in a study by Jipson and
Gelman [13] that used a dog-like robot in a video. Their robot was
different from aibo, which we used in the present study, so we
cannot treat both results as equivalent but there could also be some
cultural differences in terms of evaluations of robots. Nomura et al.
[27] reported that Japanese university students were likely to
believe that robots can make decisions by themselves and have the
capacity to feel emotions as humans do. Japan is a country in which
interactive robots are everywhere -- at home, in shopping malls for
entertainment, in films, and in cartoons -- and our results may
reflect this fact. However, some studies have reported that Japanese
people do not evaluate robots more positively than people in other
countries [2, 23]. Additional studies are in need of replication in
other countries to investigate whether similar results would be
obtained.
There are some limitations in the present study. First, we only
showed the participants robots using photos. It is possible that their
evaluations would be different if they were observing real robots.
Second, we only tested undergraduate students and, thus, it is still
unclear whether the present results can be extended to other age
groups, such as elderly individuals or children.
5. Conclusion
In this study, we investigated whether animism tendencies and
empathy, instead of experience with robots, can explain individual
differences in positive evaluations of robots (i.e., friendship and
morality toward robots). In a sample of Japanese university
students, we confirmed that animism tendencies and empathy may
be important factors that influence an individual’s belief that robots
are social agents. Aliveness animism or a tendency to believe
ambiguous things as alive, agentic animism or a tendency to
attribute perceptual and name properties to robots, and some
factors of empathy explained individuals’ belief of friendship and
morality towards robots. We also suggested that there are three
different animism tendencies: agentic animism, or a tendency to
perceive robots as intentional agents, might be different from
general or aliveness animism.
In the near future, socially interactive robots are likely to be more
widespread than today. They may be able to help people by working
in schools, hospitals, or nursing homes [see also 11, 12]. The present
results suggested that people’s positive evaluations of robots may
vary based on their personal trait or beliefs. This idea could help to
build a robot that can avoid someone who may harm them or that
can seek a help to a right person when it is bullied. In fact, Brsci,
Kidokoro, Suehiro, and Kanda [3] reported that children often abuse
robots when they are separate from their parents. Robots can seek
a help for adults in this situation.
Moreover, the present results could help to make effective robots
that can teach something new to us. In other words, robots could be
“good teachers” if a person believes that robots are social agents,
whereas robots’ teaching would not be effective for a person who
never believe that robots are social agents. It is important to
understand individual differences in the evaluation of robots in
order to choose suitable robots in these circumstances. Our study is
a first step in understanding such individual tendencies.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are grateful to students who participated in this study. This
research was supported by a research fellowship from Center for
Baby Science, Doshisha University.
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