Timescale bias in the attribution of mind.

Morewedge, Carey K.; Preston, Jesse Lee; Wegner, Daniel M.

doi:10.1037/0022-3514.93.1.1

Cited by 168 publications

(147 citation statements)

References 63 publications

(67 reference statements)

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“…Lacking any motion or movement, an agent appears to be either dead or sleeping. Likewise, a person's voice also contains motion through variance in pitch (intonation) and pace, among others, providing cues to a mental life of conscious thought or emotional experience (Gray & Wegner, 2008;Morewedge et al, 2007;Schroeder & Epley, 2015). If these cues convey the mental capacity for thinking and feeling, and hence personhood, then voice lacking these cues should lead to the same inferences as observers reading text alone.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…People sometimes recognize a thoughtful mind in their cars, computers, or other mindless gadgets (Guthrie, 1995;Naas, 2010). A robot that moves at a humanlike pace seems more thoughtful than a relatively sluggish or frantic robot (Morewedge, Preston, & Wegner, 2007). An autonomous automobile that interacts with you using a human voice while driving itself seems "smarter," and therefore, more trustworthy, than a noninteractive vehicle (Waytz, Heafner, & Epley, 2014).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Mistaking minds and machines: How speech affects dehumanization and anthropomorphism.

Schroeder

Epley

2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Treating a human mind like a machine is an essential component of dehumanization, whereas attributing a humanlike mind to a machine is an essential component of anthropomorphism. Here we tested how a cue closely connected to a person’s actual mental experience—a humanlike voice—affects the likelihood of mistaking a person for a machine, or a machine for a person. We predicted that paralinguistic cues in speech are particularly likely to convey the presence of a humanlike mind, such that removing voice from communication (leaving only text) would increase the likelihood of mistaking the text’s creator for a machine. Conversely, adding voice to a computer-generated script (resulting in speech) would increase the likelihood of mistaking the text’s creator for a human. Four experiments confirmed these hypotheses, demonstrating that people are more likely to infer a human (vs. computer) creator when they hear a voice expressing thoughts than when they read the same thoughts in text. Adding human visual cues to text (i.e., seeing a person perform a script in a subtitled video clip), did not increase the likelihood of inferring a human creator compared with only reading text, suggesting that defining features of personhood may be conveyed more clearly in speech (Experiments 1 and 2). Removing the naturalistic paralinguistic cues that convey humanlike capacity for thinking and feeling, such as varied pace and intonation, eliminates the humanizing effect of speech (Experiment 4). We discuss implications for dehumanizing others through text-based media, and for anthropomorphizing machines through speech-based media.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mistaking minds and machines: How speech affects dehumanization and anthropomorphism.

Schroeder

Epley

2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…For example, movement in an object can create the impression that it is alive (Tremoulet and Feldman 2000). Further, the timescale of this movement is important to the perception of humanity: things that dart about quickly may be seen less as human and more like insects, whereas things that move very slowly, such as clocks, may seem to lack humanity in this regard (Morewedge, Preston, and Wegner 2004). Thus, the human-like pace with which iRobot's Roomba vacuuming robot moves may be why some consumers dress it up in costumes and others have bought a second Roomba so that their first one would not be lonely!…”

Section: Ease Of Anthropomorphizingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is That Car Smiling at Me? Schema Congruity as a Basis for Evaluating Anthropomorphized Products

Aggarwal¹,

McGill²

2007

J Consum Res

734

646

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The present research proposes schema congruity as a theoretical basis for examining the effectiveness and consequences of product anthropomorphism. Results of two studies suggest that the ability of consumers to anthropomorphize a product and their consequent evaluation of that product depend on the extent to which that product is endowed with characteristics congruent with the proposed human schema. Furthermore, consumers' perception of the product as human mediates the influence of feature type on product evaluation. Results of a third study, however, show that the affective tag attached to the specific human schema moderates the evaluation but not the successful anthropomorphizing of the product.

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“…The perception of video game characters may thus be similar to the perception of TV or movie characters. Further, human perception research suggests that people automatically identify social entities once they have detected biological motion (Ahlstrom, Blake & Ahlstrom, 1997;Morewedge, Preston & Wegner, 2007), RUNNING HEAD: Virtual Violence and Guilt 5 readily perceive simple action-sequences with artificial objects as social (Heberlein & Adolphs, 2004;Heider & Simmel, 1944;Oatley & Yuill, 1985;Scholl & Tremoulet, 2000), and anthropomorphize non-human characters (Epley, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2007;Mar & Macrae, 2006). Given humans' tendency to perceive even simple animated objects in a social way, it seems plausible that the sophisticated display of video game characters will trigger intense social perceptions in users.…”

Section: Different From Playing Chess: the Moral Significance Of Virtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Just a Game? Unjustified Virtual Violence Produces Guilt in Empathetic Players

Hartmann¹,

Toz²,

Brandon³

2010

Media Psychology

109

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Many avid gamers discount violent conduct in video games as morally insignificant as "it is just a game". However, recent debates among users, regarding video games featuring inappropriate forms of virtual violence, suggest a more complex truth. Two experiments (N 1 = 49, N 2 = 80) examined users' guilt responses in order to explore the moral significance of virtual violence. In both studies, justification of virtual violence and users' trait empathy determined guilt in a structurally similar way to real-world scenarios: people felt guiltier if they engaged in unjustified virtual violence, especially if they were empathetic players. These results show that video games are capable of inducing affective moral responses in users. Accordingly, virtual violence may be considered morally significant action.Keywords: violence, video games, guilt, empathy, justification, morality (Bartle, 2008).Virtual violence may be defined as any behavior intended to do harm to another video game character, who is motivated to avoid the harm-doing (Anderson et al., 2008;Baron & Richardson, 1994). Shooting virtual characters for example, in first-person shooter video games, provides a typical example of virtual violence. While many studies have shown that virtual violence depicted in video games increases aggression in users (Anderson et al., 2010), surprisingly little is known about how users perceive and experience virtual violence themselves (e.g., Scharrer & Leone, 2006, Young & Whitty, 2010.Violent video games are designed for entertainment purposes. Consequently, regular violent game players do not typically feel as though they are doing something wrong when they shoot virtual characters. A frequent argument put forward by avid gamers is that they are well aware that the violence depicted in video games "is not real" (Ladas, 2002). For example, Klimmt, Schmid, Nosper, Vorderer, and Hartmann (2006, see also Whitty, Young, & Goodings, in press) asked avid gamers how they experience virtual violence personally. The majority of players replied that they enjoyed virtual violence as they believe that shooting virtual characters is "just a game" (comparable to chess) and has "nothing to do with killing". This suggests that players maintain a psychologically detached and unaffected stance when playing violent games and that virtual violence is too artificial to be considered morally significant and thus trigger any moral response in the user.RUNNING HEAD: Virtual Violence and Guilt 2 However, Klimmt et al.'s (2006) study suggests that users may also perceive and judge virtual violence in a moral way. In their study, a number of players indicated that they would find it disturbing if they accidentally shot a child, for example, or if painful injuries were depicted in the video game. Related discussion of "inappropriate" virtual violence also exists in the video game community. Many video game-related online blogs and forums recently featured heated debate regarding a mission included in the popular online-role-playing game "...

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Timescale bias in the attribution of mind.

Cited by 168 publications

References 63 publications

Mistaking minds and machines: How speech affects dehumanization and anthropomorphism.

Mistaking minds and machines: How speech affects dehumanization and anthropomorphism.

Is That Car Smiling at Me? Schema Congruity as a Basis for Evaluating Anthropomorphized Products

Just a Game? Unjustified Virtual Violence Produces Guilt in Empathetic Players

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