A Cross-Cultural Comparison on Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Towards Artificial Agents

F. Diana, M. Kawahara, I. Saccardi, R. Hortensius, A. Tanaka, M.E. Kret

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Historically, there has been a great deal of confusion in the literature regarding cross-cultural differences in attitudes towards artificial agents and preferences for their physical appearance. Previous studies have almost exclusively assessed attitudes using self-report measures (i.e., questionnaires). In the present study, we sought to expand our knowledge on the influence of cultural background on explicit and implicit attitudes towards robots and avatars. Using the Negative Attitudes Towards Robots Scale and the Implicit Association Test in a Japanese and Dutch sample, we investigated the effect of culture and robots’ body types on explicit and implicit attitudes across two experiments (total n = 669). Partly overlapping with our hypothesis, we found that Japanese individuals had a more positive explicit attitude towards robots compared to Dutch individuals, but no evidence of such a difference was found at the implicit level. As predicted, the implicit preference towards humans was moderate in both cultural groups, but in contrast to what we expected, neither culture nor robot embodiment influenced this preference. These results suggest that only at the explicit but not implicit level, cultural differences appear in attitudes towards robots.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1439–1455
Number of pages17
JournalInternational Journal of Social Robotics
Volume15
Issue number8
Early online date2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) (Starting Grant #802979) awarded to Mariska Kret. We like to express our gratitude to the student that helped with the data collection and to M.M for the fruitful discussion about Japanese culture.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).

Funding

This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) (Starting Grant #802979) awarded to Mariska Kret. We like to express our gratitude to the student that helped with the data collection and to M.M for the fruitful discussion about Japanese culture.

FundersFunder number
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme802979
European Research Council

    Keywords

    • Cross-cultural
    • Explicit attitudes
    • Human-like robots
    • Human–robot interaction
    • Implicit attitudes
    • Machine-like robots

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'A Cross-Cultural Comparison on Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Towards Artificial Agents'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this