Effects of perspective taking on implicit attitudes and performance in economic games

Abstract

Perspective taking, allows people to make inferences about another’s mental states and goals. For social robotics, perspective taking could facilitate social interactions. The current study investigated whether taking the spatial perspective of a robot resulted in reduced implicit biases, more generous behavior towards robotic agents in economic games, and higher explicit ratings of humanness. The results show that agent type had a significant effect on subjective ratings of humanness, explicit attitudes, and decision-making. Spatial perspective taking had a significant effect on implicit associations such that the strength of association with positive attributes towards humans and negative attributes towards robots were enhanced. The effect of perspective taking on HRI should be further studied, as implicit attitudes are often expressed as actions and judgments outside the performer’s awareness [1].