A Cross-Cultural Comparison on Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Towards Artificial Agents.

Historically, there has been a great deal of confusion in the literature regarding cross-cultural differences in attitudes towards artificial agents and preferences for their physical appearance. Previous studies have almost exclusively assessed attitudes using self-report measures (i.e., questionnaires). In the present study, we sought to expand our knowledge on the influence of cultural background on explicit and implicit attitudes towards robots and avatars. Using the Negative Attitudes Towards Robots Scale and the Implicit Association Test in a Japanese and Dutch sample, we investigated the effect of culture and robots' body types on explicit and implicit attitudes across two experiments (total n = 669). Partly overlapping with our hypothesis, we found that Japanese individuals had a more positive explicit attitude towards robots compared to Dutch individuals, but no evidence of such a difference was found at the implicit level. As predicted, the implicit preference towards humans was moderate in both cultural groups, but in contrast to what we expected, neither culture nor robot embodiment influenced this preference. These results suggest that only at the explicit but not implicit level, cultural differences appear in attitudes towards robots. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12369-022-00917-7.

A neurocognitive view on the depiction of social robots.

While we applaud the careful breakdown by Clark and Fischer of the representation of social robots held by the human user, we emphasise that a neurocognitive perspective is crucial to fully capture how people perceive and construe social robots at the behavioural and brain levels.

How video calls affect mimicry and trust during interactions.

Many social species, humans included, mimic emotional expressions, with important consequences for social bonding. Although humans increasingly interact via video calls, little is known about the effect of these online interactions on the mimicry of scratching and yawning, and their linkage with trust. The current study investigated whether mimicry and trust are affected by these new communication media. Using participant-confederate dyads (n = 27), we tested the mimicry of four behaviours across three different conditions: watching a pre-recorded video, online video call, and face-to-face. We measured mimicry of target behaviours frequently observed in emotional situations, yawn and scratch and control behaviours, lip-bite and face-touch. In addition, trust in the confederate was assessed via a trust game. Our study revealed that (i) mimicry and trust did not differ between face-to-face and video calls, but were significantly lower in the pre-recorded condition; and (ii) target behaviours were significantly more mimicked than the control behaviours. This negative relationship can possibly be explained by the negative connotation usually associated with the behaviours included in this study. Overall, this study showed that video calls might provide enough interaction cues for mimicry to occur in our student population and during interactions between strangers. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Face2face: advancing the science of social interaction'.

Domestic Violence From a Child Perspective: Impact of an Immersive Virtual Reality Experience on Men With a History of Intimate Partner Violent Behavior.

Domestic violence has long-term negative consequences on children. In this study, men with a history of partner aggression and a control group of non-offenders were embodied in a child's body from a first-person perspective in virtual reality (VR). From this perspective, participants witnessed a scene of domestic violence where a male avatar assaulted a female avatar. We evaluated the impact of the experience on emotion recognition skills and heart rate deceleration responses. We found that the experience mainly impacted the recognition of angry facial expressions. The results also indicate that males with a history of partner aggression had larger physiological responses during an explicit violent event (when the virtual abuser threw a telephone) compared with controls, while their physiological reactions were less pronounced when the virtual abuser invaded the victim's personal space. We show that embodiment from a child's perspective during a conflict situation in VR impacts emotion recognition, physiological reactions, and attitudes towards violence. We provide initial evidence of the potential of VR in the rehabilitation and neuropsychological assessment of males with a history of domestic violence, especially in relation to children.

Domain-specific and domain-general neural network engagement during human-robot interactions.

To what extent do domain-general and domain-specific neural network engagement generalize across interactions with human and artificial agents? In this exploratory study, we analysed a publicly available functional MRI (fMRI) data set (n = 22) to probe the similarities and dissimilarities in neural architecture while participants conversed with another person or a robot. Incorporating trial-by-trial dynamics of the interactions, listening and speaking, we used whole-brain, region-of-interest and functional connectivity analyses to test response profiles within and across social or non-social, domain-specific and domain-general networks, that is, the person perception, theory-of-mind, object-specific, language and multiple-demand networks. Listening to a robot compared to a human resulted in higher activation in the language network, especially in areas associated with listening comprehension, and in the person perception network. No differences in activity of the theory-of-mind network were found. Results from the functional connectivity analysis showed no difference between interactions with a human or robot in within- and between-network connectivity. Together, these results suggest that although largely similar regions are activated when speaking to a human and to a robot, activity profiles during listening point to a dissociation at a lower level or perceptual level, but not higher order cognitive level.

No Evidence for an Effect of the Smell of Hexanal on Trust in Human-Robot Interaction.

The level of interpersonal trust among people is partially determined through the sense of smell. Hexanal, a molecule which smell resembles freshly cut grass, can increase trust in people. Here, we ask the question if smell can be leveraged to facilitate human-robot interaction and test whether hexanal also increases the level of trust during collaboration with a social robot. In a preregistered double-blind, placebo-controlled study, we tested if trial-by-trial and general trust during perceptual decision making in collaboration with a social robot is affected by hexanal across two samples (n = 46 and n = 44). It was hypothesized that unmasked hexanal and hexanal masked by eugenol, a molecule with a smell resembling clove, would increase the level of trust in human-robot interaction, compared to eugenol alone or a control condition consisting of only the neutral smelling solvent propylene glycol. Contrasting previous findings in human interaction, no significant effect of unmasked or eugenol-masked hexanal on trust in robots was observed. These findings indicate that the conscious or nonconscious impact of smell on trust might not generalise to interactions with social robots. One explanation could be category- and context-dependency of smell leading to a mismatch between the natural smell of hexanal, a smell also occurring in human sweat, and the mechanical physical or mental representation of the robot.

Tracking human interactions with a commercially-available robot over multiple days.

Background: As research examining human-robot interaction moves from the laboratory to the real world, studies seeking to examine how people interact with robots face the question of which robotic platform to employ to collect data in situ. To facilitate the study of a broad range of individuals, from children to clinical populations, across diverse environments, from homes to schools, a robust, reproducible, low-cost and easy-to-use robotic platform is needed. Methods: We describe how a commercially available off-the-shelf robot, Cozmo, can be used to study embodied human-robot interactions in a wide variety of settings, including the user's home. We describe the steps required to use this affordable and flexible platform for longitudinal human-robot interaction studies. First, we outline the technical specifications and requirements of this platform and accessories. We then show how log files containing detailed data on the human-robot interaction can be collected and extracted. Finally, we detail the types of information that can be retrieved from these data. Results: We present findings from a validation that mapped the behavioural repertoire of the Cozmo robot and introduce an accompanying interactive emotion classification tool to use with this robot. This tool combined with the data extracted from the log files can provide the necessary details to understand the psychological consequences of long-term interactions. Conclusions: This low-cost robotic platform has the potential to provide the field with a variety of valuable new possibilities to study the social cognitive processes underlying human-robot interactions within and beyond the research laboratory, which are user-driven and unconstrained in both time and place.

Empathy and Schadenfreude in Human-Robot Teams.

Intergroup dynamics shape the ways in which we interact with other people. We feel more empathy towards ingroup members compared to outgroup members, and can even feel pleasure when an outgroup member experiences misfortune, known as schadenfreude. Here, we test the extent to which these intergroup biases emerge during interactions with robots. We measured trial-by-trial fluctuations in emotional reactivity to the outcome of a competitive reaction time game to assess both empathy and schadenfreude in arbitrary human-human and human-robot teams. Across four experiments (total n = 361), we observed a consistent empathy and schadenfreude bias driven by team membership. People felt more empathy towards ingroup members than outgroup members and more schadenfreude towards outgroup members. The existence of an intergroup bias did not depend on the nature of the agent: the same effects were observed for human-human and human-robot teams. People reported similar levels of empathy and schadenfreude towards a human and robot player. The human likeness of the robot did not consistently influence this intergroup bias. In other words, similar empathy and schadenfreude biases were observed for both humanoid and mechanoid robots. For all teams, this bias was influenced by the level of team identification; individuals who identified more with their team showed stronger intergroup empathy and schadenfreude bias. Together, we show that similar intergroup dynamics that shape our interactions with people can also shape interactions with robots. Our results highlight the importance of taking intergroup biases into account when examining social dynamics of human-robot interactions.

Exploring the relationship between anthropomorphism and theory-of-mind in brain and behaviour.

The process of understanding the minds of other people, such as their emotions and intentions, is mimicked when individuals try to understand an artificial mind. The assumption is that anthropomorphism, attributing human-like characteristics to non-human agents and objects, is an analogue to theory-of-mind, the ability to infer mental states of other people. Here, we test to what extent these two constructs formally overlap. Specifically, using a multi-method approach, we test if and how anthropomorphism is related to theory-of-mind using brain (Experiment 1) and behavioural (Experiment 2) measures. In a first exploratory experiment, we examine the relationship between dispositional anthropomorphism and activity within the theory-of-mind brain network (n = 108). Results from a Bayesian regression analysis showed no consistent relationship between dispositional anthropomorphism and activity in regions of the theory-of-mind network. In a follow-up, pre-registered experiment, we explored the relationship between theory-of-mind and situational and dispositional anthropomorphism in more depth. Participants (n = 311) watched a short movie while simultaneously completing situational anthropomorphism and theory-of-mind ratings, as well as measures of dispositional anthropomorphism and general theory-of-mind. Only situational anthropomorphism predicted the ability to understand and predict the behaviour of the film's characters. No relationship between situational or dispositional anthropomorphism and general theory-of-mind was observed. Together, these results suggest that while the constructs of anthropomorphism and theory-of-mind might overlap in certain situations, they remain separate and possibly unrelated at the personality level. These findings point to a possible dissociation between brain and behavioural measures when considering the relationship between theory-of-mind and anthropomorphism.

Social Cognition in the Age of Human-Robot Interaction.

Artificial intelligence advances have led to robots endowed with increasingly sophisticated social abilities. These machines speak to our innate desire to perceive social cues in the environment, as well as the promise of robots enhancing our daily lives. However, a strong mismatch still exists between our expectations and the reality of social robots. We argue that careful delineation of the neurocognitive mechanisms supporting human-robot interaction will enable us to gather insights critical for optimising social encounters between humans and robots. To achieve this, the field must incorporate human neuroscience tools including mobile neuroimaging to explore long-term, embodied human-robot interaction in situ. New analytical neuroimaging approaches will enable characterisation of social cognition representations on a finer scale using sensitive and appropriate categorical comparisons (human, animal, tool, or object). The future of social robotics is undeniably exciting, and insights from human neuroscience research will bring us closer to interacting and collaborating with socially sophisticated robots.

Parsing the components of forgiveness: Psychological and neural mechanisms.

Forgiveness-a shift in motivation away from retaliation and avoidance towards increased goodwill for the perceived wrongdoer-plays a vital role in restoring social relationships, and positively impacts personal wellbeing and society at large. Parsing the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms of forgiveness contributes theoretical clarity, yet has remained an outstanding challenge because of conceptual and methodological difficulties in the field. Here, we critically examine the neuroscientific evidence in support of a theoretical framework which accounts for the proximate mechanisms underlying forgiveness. Specifically, we integrate empirical evidence from social psychology and neuroscience to propose that forgiveness relies on three distinct and interacting psychological macro-components: cognitive control, perspective taking, and social valuation. The implication of the lateral prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, respectively, is discussed in the brain networks subserving these distinct component processes. Finally, we outline some caveats that limit the translational value of existing social neuroscience research and provide directions for future research to advance the field of forgiveness.

A neurocognitive investigation of the impact of socializing with a robot on empathy for pain.

To what extent can humans form social relationships with robots? In the present study, we combined functional neuroimaging with a robot socializing intervention to probe the flexibility of empathy, a core component of social relationships, towards robots. Twenty-six individuals underwent identical fMRI sessions before and after being issued a social robot to take home and interact with over the course of a week. While undergoing fMRI, participants observed videos of a human actor or a robot experiencing pain or pleasure in response to electrical stimulation. Repetition suppression of activity in the pain network, a collection of brain regions associated with empathy and emotional responding, was measured to test whether socializing with a social robot leads to greater overlap in neural mechanisms when observing human and robotic agents experiencing pain or pleasure. In contrast to our hypothesis, functional region-of-interest analyses revealed no change in neural overlap for agents after the socializing intervention. Similarly, no increase in activation when observing a robot experiencing pain emerged post-socializing. Whole-brain analysis showed that, before the socializing intervention, superior parietal and early visual regions are sensitive to novel agents, while after socializing, medial temporal regions show agent sensitivity. A region of the inferior parietal lobule was sensitive to novel emotions, but only during the pre-socializing scan session. Together, these findings suggest that a short socialization intervention with a social robot does not lead to discernible differences in empathy towards the robot, as measured by behavioural or brain responses. We discuss the extent to which long-term socialization with robots might shape social cognitive processes and ultimately our relationships with these machines. This article is part of the theme issue 'From social brains to social robots: applying neurocognitive insights to human-robot interaction'.

From social brains to social robots: applying neurocognitive insights to human-robot interaction.

Amidst the fourth industrial revolution, social robots are resolutely moving from fiction to reality. With sophisticated artificial agents becoming ever more ubiquitous in daily life, researchers across different fields are grappling with the questions concerning how humans perceive and interact with these agents and the extent to which the human brain incorporates intelligent machines into our social milieu. This theme issue surveys and discusses the latest findings, current challenges and future directions in neuroscience- and psychology-inspired human-robot interaction (HRI). Critical questions are explored from a transdisciplinary perspective centred around four core topics in HRI: technical solutions for HRI, development and learning for HRI, robots as a tool to study social cognition, and moral and ethical implications of HRI. Integrating findings from diverse but complementary research fields, including social and cognitive neurosciences, psychology, artificial intelligence and robotics, the contributions showcase ways in which research from disciplines spanning biological sciences, social sciences and technology deepen our understanding of the potential and limits of robotic agents in human social life. This article is part of the theme issue 'From social brains to social robots: applying neurocognitive insights to human-robot interaction'.

From Empathy to Apathy: The Bystander Effect Revisited.

The bystander effect, the reduction in helping behavior in the presence of other people, has been explained predominantly by situational influences on decision making. Diverging from this view, we highlight recent evidence on the neural mechanisms and dispositional factors that determine apathy in bystanders. We put forward a new theoretical perspective that integrates emotional, motivational, and dispositional aspects. In the presence of other bystanders, personal distress is enhanced, and fixed action patterns of avoidance and freezing dominate. This new perspective suggests that bystander apathy results from a reflexive emotional reaction dependent on the personality of the bystander.

From automata to animate beings: the scope and limits of attributing socialness to artificial agents.

Understanding the mechanisms and consequences of attributing socialness to artificial agents has important implications for how we can use technology to lead more productive and fulfilling lives. Here, we integrate recent findings on the factors that shape behavioral and brain mechanisms that support social interactions between humans and artificial agents. We review how visual features of an agent, as well as knowledge factors within the human observer, shape attributions across dimensions of socialness. We explore how anthropomorphism and dehumanization further influence how we perceive and interact with artificial agents. Based on these findings, we argue that the cognitive reconstruction within the human observer is likely to be far more crucial in shaping our interactions with artificial agents than previously thought, while the artificial agent's visual features are possibly of lesser importance. We combine these findings to provide an integrative theoretical account based on the "like me" hypothesis, and discuss the key role played by the Theory-of-Mind network, especially the temporal parietal junction, in the shift from mechanistic to social attributions. We conclude by highlighting outstanding questions on the impact of long-term interactions with artificial agents on the behavioral and brain mechanisms of attributing socialness to these agents.

The relation between bystanders' behavioral reactivity to distress and later helping behavior during a violent conflict in virtual reality.

The occurrence of helping behavior is thought to be automatically triggered by reflexive reactions and promoted by intuitive decisions. Here, we studied whether reflexive reactions to an emergency situation are associated with later helping behavior in a different situation, a violent conflict. First, 29 male supporters of F.C. Barcelona performed a cued-reaction time task with a low and high cognitive load manipulation, to tap into reflexive and reflective processes respectively, during the observation of an emergency. Next, participants entered a bar in Virtual Reality and had a conversation with a virtual fellow supporter. During this conversation, a virtual Real Madrid supporter entered and started an aggressive argument with the fellow supporter that escalated into a physical fight. Verbal and physical interventions of the participant served as measures of helping behavior. Results showed that faster responses to an emergency situation during low, but not during high cognitive load, were associated with more interventions during the violent conflict. However, a tendency to describe the decision to act during the violent conflict as intuitive and reflex-like was related to more interventions. Further analyses revealed that a disposition to experience sympathy, other-oriented feelings during distressful situations, was related to self-reported intuitive decision-making, a reduced distance to the perpetrator, and higher in the intervening participants. Taken together, these results shed new light on helping behavior and are consistent with the notion of a motivational system in which the act of helping is dependent on a complex interplay between intuitive, reflexive and deliberate, reflective processes.

Looking at the face and seeing the whole body. Neural basis of combined face and body expressions.

In the natural world, faces are not isolated objects but are rather encountered in the context of the whole body. Previous work has studied the perception of combined faces and bodies using behavioural and electrophysiological measurements, but the neural correlates of emotional face-body perception still remain unexplored. Here, we combined happy and fearful faces and bodies to investigate the influence of body expressions on the neural processing of the face, the effect of emotional ambiguity between the two and the role of the amygdala in this process. Our functional magnetic resonance imaging analyses showed that the activity in motor, prefrontal and visual areas increases when facial expressions are presented together with bodies rather than in isolation, consistent with the notion that seeing body expressions triggers both emotional and action-related processes. In contrast, psychophysiological interaction analyses revealed that amygdala modulatory activity increases after the presentation of isolated faces when compared to combined faces and bodies. Furthermore, a facial expression combined with a congruent body enhanced both cortical activity and amygdala functional connectivity when compared to an incongruent face-body compound. Finally, the results showed that emotional body postures influence the processing of facial expressions, especially when the emotion conveyed by the body implies danger.

The Basolateral Amygdalae and Frontotemporal Network Functions for Threat Perception.

Although the amygdalae play a central role in threat perception and reactions, the direct contributions of the amygdalae to specific aspects of threat perception, from ambiguity resolution to reflexive or deliberate action, remain ill understood in humans. Animal studies show that a detailed understanding requires a focus on the different subnuclei, which is not yet achieved in human research. Given the limits of human imaging methods, the crucial contribution needs to come from individuals with exclusive and selective amygdalae lesions. The current study investigated the role of the basolateral amygdalae and their connection with associated frontal and temporal networks in the automatic perception of threat. Functional activation and connectivity of five individuals with Urbach-Wiethe disease with focal basolateral amygdalae damage and 12 matched controls were measured with functional MRI while they attended to the facial expression of a threatening face-body compound stimuli. Basolateral amygdalae damage was associated with decreased activation in the temporal pole but increased activity in the ventral and dorsal medial prefrontal and medial orbitofrontal cortex. This dissociation between the prefrontal and temporal networks was also present in the connectivity maps. Our results contribute to a dynamic, multirole, subnuclei-based perspective on the involvement of the amygdalae in fear perception. Damage to the basolateral amygdalae decreases activity in the temporal network while increasing activity in the frontal network, thereby potentially triggering a switch from resolving ambiguity to dysfunctional threat signaling and regulation, resulting in hypersensitivity to threat.

The relationship of approach/avoidance motivation and asymmetric frontal cortical activity: A review of studies manipulating frontal asymmetry.

The balance between activity in the left and right frontal cortex, commonly referred to as asymmetric frontal cortical activity, has served as a proxy for an organism's motivational direction (i.e., approach vs. avoidance). Many studies have examined the influence of the manipulation of motivational direction on asymmetrical frontal cortical activity and found results consistent with the idea that greater relative left (right) frontal cortical activity is associated with approach (avoidance) motivation. We critically review literature employing physical (versus psychological) manipulations of frontal asymmetry using a variety of methodologies including neurofeedback training, muscular contractions, and non-invasive brain stimulation. These reviewed methods allow us to make stronger causal inferences regarding the role of asymmetric frontal cortical activity in approach and avoidance motivation.