Lay causal explanations of human vs. humanoid behavior

Abstract

The present study used a questionnaire-based method for investigating people’s interpretations of behavior exhibited by a person and a humanoid robot, respectively. Participants were given images and verbal descriptions of different behaviors and were asked to judge the plausibility of seven causal explanation types. Results indicate that human and robot behavior are explained similarly, but with some significant differences, and with less agreement in the robot case.