Perspective-taking of Virtual Agents for Promoting Prosocial Behaviors

Abstract Perspective-taking, which enables people to imagine another’s thinking and goals, is known to be effective for promoting prosocial behaviors in human-computer interactions. However, most previous studies have focused on simulating human-human interactions in the real world by offering participants experiences related to various moral tasks through the use of human-like virtual agents. In this study, we investigated whether taking the perspective of different robots in a robot-altruistic task would influence the social behaviors of participants in a dictator game. Our findings showed that participants who watched the help-receiver view behaved more altruistically toward a robot than those who watched the help-provider view.