Gender Effects in Observation of Robotic and Humanoid Actions

Abstract

Robots are gaining an increasingly important role in industrial production. Notably, a high level of acceptance is an important factor for co-working situation between human and robot. The aim of the present study was to investigate the differences in the perception of anthropomorphic and robotic movements using models consisting of a virtual robot and a digital human. Videos of each model displayed different degrees of human likeness or robot likeness in speed and trajectories of placing movements. Female and male participants were asked to rate on a Likert scale the perceived levels of human likeness or robot likeness in the two models. Overall, results suggest that males were sensitive to the differences between robotic and anthropomorphic movements, whereas females showed no difference between them. However, compared to males, female participants attributed more anthropomorphic features to robotic movements. The study is a first step toward a more comprehensive understanding of the human ability to differentiate between anthropomorphic and robotic movements and suggests a crucial role of gender in the human-robot interaction.

Age- and Gender-Related Differences in Speech Alignment Toward Humans and Voice-AI

“…On the one hand, there is some evidence in the present findings for transfer of social behaviors from human-human to human-AI interaction, supporting predictions made by the CASA framework (Nass et al, 1994;Nass et al, 1997). For example, female shadowers align toward human and voice-AI model talkers to the same degree, in line with findings by Abel et al (2020) who found that female participants showed no difference in perception of human-likeness for movements produced by a virtual robot and a digital human. However, in the same study, males did show a distinction (rating the digital human movements as more humanlike than the robot).…”

“…Understanding differences in how females and males communicate with voice-AI can reflect how speech patterns are transferred from human-human communication to linguistic interactions with technological agents. Indeed, there is much interest in understanding the role of gender in behavioral patterns during human-computer interaction (e.g., Abel et al, 2020). Recent work has begun to explore gender-differences in attitudes and perceptions toward technological agents and, in particular, during human-robot interaction (see Nomura (2017) for survey).…”

Do Men Have No Need for “Feminist” Artificial Intelligence? Agentic and Gendered Voice Assistants in the Light of Basic Psychological Needs

“…Third, females might prefer the high-agency female assistant, because it is the one, they would most readily identify with. In past studies, women were found to have a stronger tendency to anthropomorphize machines (e.g., Abel et al, 2020 ) and to identify with fictional screen characters than men ( Aytulun and Sunai, 2020 ). Women who view themselves as independent and assertive might therefore prefer to identify with an artificially intelligent counterpart that corresponds to a more contemporary image of women.…”

Anthropomorphic or non-anthropomorphic? Effects of biological sex in observation of actions in a digital human model and a gantry robot model

“…Imaging data were collected from the same group of participants as in the study by Abel et al (2020). A total of 40 right-handed healthy volunteers, with twenty male and .…”