What makes people approve or condemn mind upload technology? Untangling the effects of sexual disgust, purity and science fiction familiarity

Laakasuo, Michael; Drosinou, Maria-Anna; Koverola, Mika; Kunnari, Anton; Halonen, Juho; Lehtonen, Noora; Palomäki, Jussi

doi:10.1057/s41599-018-0124-6

Cited by 34 publications

(95 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Our current set of studies offer new and timely insights into issues concerning automatized medical ethics, since, to our knowledge, vignette methodology has not previously been used to study personal autonomy violations involving autonomous AI agents. However, it is somewhat challenging to contrast our results with previous moral psychological work, since there are not that many papers focusing on the intersection of medical ethics and robotics, or more generally on the "moral psychology of robotics" (see Malle et al, 2015;Awad et al, 2018;Bigman & Gray, 2018;Bigman, Waytz, Alterovitz & Gray, 2019;Bonnefon et al, 2016;Laakasuo et al, 2018;Koverola et al, in press).…”

Section: Contextualizing the Resultsmentioning

confidence: 77%

Moral Psychology of Nursing Robots: Humans Dislike Violations of Patient Autonomy but Like Robots Disobeying Orders

Laakasuo¹,

Kunnari²,

Palomäki³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Artificial intelligences (AIs) are widely used in tasks ranging from transportation and healthcare to military. Many tasks carried out by autonomous AIs have consequences for human well-being, but it is still unclear how people would prefer them to act in ethically difficult situations. In six studies with data from two cultures (five quantitative experiments, n = 1569, and a qualitative anthropological field study, n = 30), we presented people with hypothetical situations where a human or an advanced robot nurse is ordered to forcefully medicate an unwilling patient. We measured moral acceptance, perceived trust, and allocation of responsibility relating to the nurse's decision of either following orders to forcefully medicate the patient, or disregarding orders to protect the patient's autonomy. Our participants were aversive to robot nurses who forcefully medicated the patient, and preferred robot nurses who respected patient autonomy by disobeying orders. Under certain conditions, the decision to respect patient autonomy was more acceptable for robot nurses than for human nurses. Thus, our results suggest that people prefer robots that are capable of disobeying orders in favor of abstract moral principles such as valuing personal autonomy. These findings were relatively robust against manipulating the nurse's perceived reputation and character, and whether or not the patient lived or died afterwards. We also found that moral judgment is distinct from evaluations of trust and responsibility. In general, our participants did not trust robot nurses or hold them responsible for their actions; on the other hand human nurses who forcefully medicated a patient were morally condemned but also trusted. It seems that Moral Psychology of Robotics is a new and increasingly relevant sub-field of moral psychology that requires extensive attention.

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Section: Contextualizing the Resultsmentioning

confidence: 77%

Moral Psychology of Nursing Robots: Humans Dislike Violations of Patient Autonomy but Like Robots Disobeying Orders

Laakasuo¹,

Kunnari²,

Palomäki³

et al. 2019

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…For example, patients and older adults preferred familiar social partners [26]. Furthermore, older adults might be unfamiliar with or even have negative feelings toward non-humanlike or mechanical robots due to their lower familiarity with new technology [27]. Therefore, older adults might prefer humanlike robots because, compared to non-humanlike robots, humanlike robots with higher familiarity could provide stronger emotional support for older adults.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since we did not collect data of participants’ psychometric traits and experiences, such as anxiety traits and animal reminder sensitivity, we cannot be sure if the age differences in UVE observed in the current study resulted from differences in psychometric traits between age groups. Neither can we exclude other possible factors which might affect the UVE, including the relatively lower exposure of older adults to science fiction and their unfamiliarity with robots, which could be negatively correlated with the possibility of interacting with new technology [27].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age-Related Differences in the Uncanny Valley Effect

Chien

Yeh

2020

Gerontology

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Background: Due to declining birthrates and an increasing aging population, shortage of the caregiving labor force has become a global issue. Among various efforts toward the solution, introducing robotic products for assistance could provide an effective way to help older adults in their daily lives. As previous studies have indicated that older adults' acceptance of robots is lower than that of younger adults, enhancing older adults' acceptance of robots is imperative. Because older adults' first impressions based on a robot's appearance might affect their acceptance of the robot, we investigated the uncanny valley effect (UVE) here. The UVE refers to the phenomenon that people rate robots more positively as robots become more humanlike, but only up to a certain point; as robots approach a near-perfect similarity to human appearance, likeability drops and forms the uncanny valley. Nevertheless, evidence for the UVE came mainly from younger adults. Objective: The present study aimed to examine whether the UVE varies across different age groups and whether a robot's appearance would affect participants' acceptance of the robot's service or companionship. Methods: An online questionnaire study was conducted with 255 participants, including younger (n = 77, age 18-39 years), middle-aged (n = 87, age 40-59 years), and older (n = 91, age 60-87 years) adults. Participants were asked to view each picture in a set selected from a total of 83 robot pictures and evaluate their impressions of each robot and the intention of use regarding robot function as a service provider or a companion. Results: The UVE was found in younger and middle-aged adults; however, older adults did not show the UVE. Older adults preferred humanlike over non-humanlike robots, regardless of robot function. Conclusion: The design of assistive robots should take the UVE into consideration by customizing robot appearance based on the age group of the intended user.

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“…On the other hand, enhancement technologies may be seen primarily as violations of bodily purity, or as deviation from ingroup norms, which would make them a concern for those who prioritize binding values. Furthermore, previous research has shown that the individual levels of 'science fiction hobbyism' are associated with moral approval of mind upload technologies, even after controlling for the effects of moral foundations (Laakasuo et al, 2018). It therefore stands to reason that science fiction hobbyists could also hold more favorable attitudes toward brain implants.…”

Section: Non-human Superhumansmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Schaich Borg et al, 2008;Haidt et al, 1997), and individual differences in disgust sensitivity are associated with self-placement on the liberal-conservative ideological continuum (Inbar et al, 2012). There is also evidence that sexual disgust specifically (see Tybur et al, 2009) predicts disapproval of transhumanist technologies like mind uploading (Laakasuo et al, 2018;Laakasuo et al, 2020). Why individual differences in disgust proneness would be associated with moral evaluations of situations that are not themselves disgust-evoking (see also Laakasuo et al, 2017) is still poorly understood; but such empirical connections may ultimately help develop a more cohesive theory of moral cognition.…”

Section: Non-human Superhumansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Treatments Approved, Boosts Eschewed: Moral Limits of Neurotechnological Enhancement

Koverola¹,

Kunnari²,

Drosinou³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Through five experimental studies we measured moral reactions to brain implants. We used three different measurements: 1) moral approval, or the general acceptance of brain-enhancing implants and people getting such implants, 2) perceived unfairness of the enhancement and 3) dehumanization of persons using brain implants. In our vignettes, the enhancement was on one of three levels: a) it alleviated an ailment, b) it gave optimal human level performance or c) it gave superhuman performance. Studies 1 to 4 were about memory enhancement, Study 5A about en-hancing general intelligence and Study 5B about enhancing emotional stability.We successfully showed that moral approval, sense of fairness and dehumanization are rele-vant in contexts where moral implications of new technologies are being evaluated and that while people generally approve of curing ailments, they are more cautious of unfamiliar levels of en-hancement. Furthermore, we linked the tendency to condemn transhumanist technologies to fac-tors associated with disgust sensitivity (the binding orientation of the Moral Foundations Theory and sexual disgust) and found that science fiction hobbyism is linked to approval of brain im-plants. We also successfully ruled out possible idiosyncrasies associated with our stimulus materi-als and eliminated multiple alternative explanations common in the study of moral cognition

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What makes people approve or condemn mind upload technology? Untangling the effects of sexual disgust, purity and science fiction familiarity

Cited by 34 publications

References 53 publications

Moral Psychology of Nursing Robots: Humans Dislike Violations of Patient Autonomy but Like Robots Disobeying Orders

Moral Psychology of Nursing Robots: Humans Dislike Violations of Patient Autonomy but Like Robots Disobeying Orders

Age-Related Differences in the Uncanny Valley Effect

Treatments Approved, Boosts Eschewed: Moral Limits of Neurotechnological Enhancement

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