Julia Self

We tend to see faces, especially eyes, in places that are not humans or animals.

For example, a tree might seem like it has a face and it's perfectly natural to ascribe human-like characteristics to that tree.

So it seems, according to our study, of course, we cannot conclude that it's the only way to add this human likeness to robots, but it seems a very simple and efficient way.

We might start to feel that this robot is now capable of having emotions, for example.

Perhaps it might be a little bit even conscious about itself or its surroundings.

And we might also think that perhaps this robot is more capable of

having an influence on its surroundings by its behavior.

Perhaps it's very deep wired in us humans.

It is very important for us to observe and find these opportunities to perhaps interact with other humans.

So we very easily see noise everywhere so we can prepare ourselves for interaction.

Yeah.

We showed people pictures of humanoid robots.

These robots had faces and arms and legs.

We had over 40 pictures and we edited the eyes out of some of those robots.

So some had eyes, some didn't.

And there was also other ways in which these robots differed from one another.

We showed these pictures to participants and asked to what extent does this robot feel emotions or to what extent this robot is capable of making right or wrong moral decisions.

Questions like that.

And then we compared the overall responses to those robots having eyes to those that don't have eyes.

And we saw that these responses were higher to those robots who had eyes in general.