Multicultural experiences enhance human altruism toward robots and the mediating role of mind perception

Abstract

Artificial intelligence is developing rapidly, and the future of human beings is closely related to it. The question of how humans and robots can better work together has become a pressing concern for social psychologists. Human-robot interaction is a two-way process, and research has explored how robots can better serve humans. Whether humans share the same moral concern or even act altruistically toward robots is critical, as it will feed into technological advances and the stability of human society. Few studies have examined which cultural and psychological factors shape people's willingness and behavior to accord robots moral status, i.e., whether they are believed to deserve the same rights and benefits as humans and to perform more altruistic acts toward them. Through two sub-studies and a causal study, the present work seeks to explore whether individuals' multicultural experiences enhance altruistic behavior toward robots and whether human mental perceptions of robots play a mediating role. Study 1a began with a cross-sectional study in which 217 valid participants with an average age of 25.64 years were collected in China through the Questionnaire Star platform to measure their multicultural experiences, altruistic behavior toward robots, mind perceptions, and demographic information. To verify the model's cross-cultural generalizability that multicultural experiences enhance altruistic behavior toward robots, Study 1b replicated the procedure of Study 1a on Mturk with 313 valid participants (mean age 33.94 years) using the English version of the questionnaire from Study 1a. Finally, to infer the causal relationship between multicultural experiences and altruistic behavior toward robots, Study 2 recruited Chinese participants with six months or more of overseas experiences to prime participants' multicultural experiences through reading and writing tasks. A total of 249 valid data were collected in Study 2, with a mean age of 25.96 years, and participants were randomly divided into a multicultural experience priming group, hometown experience priming group, and control group. After priming, participants were asked to fill out the manipulation check scale, the Mind Perception Scale, and the Altruistic Behavior Toward Robots Questionnaire, with the order of the three measures presented randomly. Finally, participants reported their information on a number of demographic variables. Study 1a found that individuals' multicultural experiences positively predicted altruistic behavior toward robots, with mind perceptions playing a partially mediating role. Study 1b found that this mediating chain was cross-culturally consistent across Chinese and Western participants, with no Chinese or Western cultural differences. We infer that this effect has some degree of cultural generalizability. Study 2 found that multicultural experiences were manipulated successfully, but the main effect of multicultural experiences on altruistic behavior toward robots did not reach significance. The current work reveals that individuals’ multicultural experiences increase altruistic behavior toward robots. Specifically, the richer an individual's multicultural experiences, the more likely they are to perceive the robots as possessing mental perception. Thus, they are more likely to trigger altruistic behavior toward robots. At the same time, this effect is to some extent cross-culturally generalizable. The results of our studies enrich the theoretical predictions of multicultural experiences, identify possible “downstream effects” of multicultural experiences, and make an original contribution to the study of what factors enhance human altruistic behavior toward robots.