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People treat social robots as real social agents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2023

Alexander Eng ,
Yam Kai Chi  and
Kurt Gray Open the ORCID record for Kurt Gray [Opens in a new window]
Alexander Eng
Affiliation:
Department of Management & Organization, National University of Singapore, Singapore 119245, Singapore aeng@u.nus.edu bizkc@nus.edu.sg; https://bizfaculty.nus.edu.sg/faculty-details/?profId=452
Yam Kai Chi
Affiliation:
Department of Management & Organization, National University of Singapore, Singapore 119245, Singapore aeng@u.nus.edu bizkc@nus.edu.sg; https://bizfaculty.nus.edu.sg/faculty-details/?profId=452
Kurt Gray
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-8100, USA kurtgray@unc.edu; https://www.kurtjgray.com
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Abstract

When people interact with social robots, they treat them as real social agents. How people depict robots is fun to consider, but when people are confronted with embodied entities that move and talk – whether humans or robots – they interact with them as authentic social agents with minds, and not as mere representations.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 46 , 2023 , e28
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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