Pay Them No Mind: the Influence of Implicit and Explicit Robot Mind Perception on the Right to be Protected

Mind perception is a fundamental part of anthropomorphism and has recently been suggested to be a dual process. The current research studied the influence of implicit and explicit mind perception on a robot’s right to be protected from abuse, both in terms of participants condemning abuse that befell the robot as well as in terms of participants’ tendency to humiliate the robot themselves. Results indicated that acceptability of robot abuse can be manipulated through explicit mind perception, yet are inconclusive about the influence of implicit mind perception. Interestingly, explicit attribution of mind to the robot did not make people less likely to mistreat the robot. This suggests that the relationship between a robot’s perceived mind and right to protection is far from straightforward, and has implications for researchers and engineers who want to tackle the issue of robot abuse.