The influence of robot appearance on visual perspective taking: Testing the boundaries of the mere-appearance hypothesis

Abstract

Visual perspective taking (VPT) is an integral part of social interactions. While the mechanisms of VPT have been extensively explored in human–human interactions, only a handful of studies have investigated the mechanisms that enable humans to also take the perspective of robots. Previous work has proposed that human-like visual features trigger VPT (mere-appearance hypothesis). In this study, we investigate the boundary conditions of the mere-appearance hypothesis in four experiments in a dot-matching task. We show that not only human-like visual features trigger VPT but that a camera also triggers VPT. Non-human animal-like features, conversely, do not result in VPT. We thus suggest that not only human-like visual features but also an object that is associated with an implied social presence (a camera) can trigger VPT whereas this is not the case for non-human animal-like features. These findings further extend earlier work on the mere-appearance hypothesis and are informative for designing social robots.