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In two studies based on Stanley Milgram's original pilots, we present the first systematic examination of cyranoids as social psychological research tools. A cyranoid is created by cooperatively joining in real-time the body of one person with speech generated by another via covert speech shadowing. The resulting hybrid persona can subsequently interact with third parties face-to-face. We show that naïve interlocutors perceive a cyranoid to be a unified, autonomously communicating person, evidence for a phenomenon Milgram termed the "cyranic illusion." We also show that creating cyranoids composed of contrasting identities (a child speaking adult-generated words and vice versa) can be used to study how stereotyping and person perception are mediated by inner (dispositional) vs. outer (physical) identity. Our results establish the cyranoid method as a unique means of obtaining experimental control over inner and outer identities within social interactions rich in mundane realism. to suit their social goals. Fiction though they may be, these stories illuminate the power façade has over how we are perceived by ourselves and by others, and how we and others in turn behave in accordance with these perceptions. Stanley Milgram, perhaps best known for his obedience to authority experiments (Milgram, 1974), operationalized the Cyrano de Bergerac paradigm in a series of pilot studies conducted shortly before his death. In these pilots, he explored constructing hybrid social agents, whom he called "cyranoids" (in reference to Cyrano), via a vocal technique known as "speech shadowing," a procedure in which a person immediately repeats auditory stimuli originating elsewhere. Milgram's idea was to have one person (the "shadower") replicate the spontaneous speech of another (the "source") via a covert audio-relay apparatus while socially engaging with research subjects (the "ineractants") naïve to the subterfuge, and CYRANOIDS 3 his findings suggest that interactants will fail to detect that their interlocutor is a cyranoid.This "cyranic illusion" persisted in cases of extreme identity incongruity between source and shadower, such as when he sourced for child shadowers being interviewed by groups of teachers, none of whom believed following these interactions that they had been talking to anything other than an autonomous (albeit unusually bright) child. Milgram never formally reported the results of these studies, though descriptions of them can be found in a speech he prepared for an APA convention in 1984(Milgram, 1992 as well as in a biography authored by Blass (2004). In his APA speech, he expressed optimism that the cyranoid method could evolve into a powerful means of researching the social self and person perception. Despite this enthusiasm, no experimental validation of the method has to-date been reported, rendering cyranoids a largely dormant part of Milgram's legacy.Our goal in the present work is to resurrect the cyranoid method by exhibiting its utility as a social psychological research tool. In two stu...

We use speech shadowing to create situations wherein people converse in person with a human whose words are determined by a conversational agent computer program. Speech shadowing involves a person (the shadower) repeating vocal stimuli originating from a separate communication source in real-time. Humans shadowing for conversational agent sources (e.g., chat bots) become hybrid agents (“echoborgs”) capable of face-to-face interlocution. We report three studies that investigated people’s experiences interacting with echoborgs and the extent to which echoborgs pass as autonomous humans. First, participants in a Turing Test spoke with a chat bot via either a text interface or an echoborg. Human shadowing did not improve the chat bot’s chance of passing but did increase interrogators’ ratings of how human-like the chat bot seemed. In our second study, participants had to decide whether their interlocutor produced words generated by a chat bot or simply pretended to be one. Compared to those who engaged a text interface, participants who engaged an echoborg were more likely to perceive their interlocutor as pretending to be a chat bot. In our third study, participants were naïve to the fact that their interlocutor produced words generated by a chat bot. Unlike those who engaged a text interface, the vast majority of participants who engaged an echoborg did not sense a robotic interaction. These findings have implications for android science, the Turing Test paradigm, and human–computer interaction. The human body, as the delivery mechanism of communication, fundamentally alters the social psychological dynamics of interactions with machine intelligence.

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The aim of this chapter is to understand how the imagination of the self is mediated by cultural technologies, showing how major new inventions (such as language, writing, digitization) qualitatively change the ways in which we imagine ourselves. First, the authors look at how technology can support cognition in general and imagination specifically, examining traditional technologies such as narrative (stories, novels, and films), which have long facilitated humans’ imagination of themselves and others. Second, the authors explore how digital technologies, especially online avatars, are used to open up spaces for imagining alternative lives and virtual selves. Finally, the authors focus on future possibilities for moving human imagination out of fixed narratives and off the screen into dynamic real-world avatars and cyborg bodies. They argue that cultural technologies are becoming increasingly powerful, enabling humans not only to imagine diverse potential selves but also to institute these potential selves in practice.