Helping Not Hurting: Applying the Stereotype Content Model and BIAS Map to Social Robotics

Abstract

This paper examines relationships between perceptions of warmth and competence, emotional responses, and behavioral tendencies in the context of social robots. Participants answered questions about these three aspects of impression formation after viewing an image of one of 342 social robots in the Stanford Social Robots Database. Results suggest that people have similar emotional and behavioral reactions to robots as they have to humans; impressions of the robots' warmth and competence predicted specific emotional responses (admiration, envy, contempt, pity) and those emotional responses predicted distinct behavioral tendencies (active facilitation, active harm, passive facilitation, passive harm). However, the predicted relationships between impressions and harmful behavioral tendencies were absent. This novel asymmetry for perceptions and intentions towards robots is deliberated in the context of the computers as social actors framework and opportunities for further research are discussed.