DeepSummary
Ken Salisbury, a computer science professor at Stanford, discusses his research on robotics and how rapid prototyping has changed the field. He shares an experience early in his career where a robot malfunctioned, causing him to reflect on whether robots have feelings or a sense of self-awareness. Szu-chi Huang, a marketing professor at Stanford GSB, then explains her research study examining how people respond to robots performing heroic acts compared to humans.
Huang's study showed that people were less inspired to engage in prosocial behavior, like donating, after seeing robots portrayed as heroes in disaster response scenarios compared to humans performing the same acts. This led her to explore ways to "humanize" robots, such as highlighting their vulnerability, autonomy, and decision-making abilities, which helped increase people's emotional connection and motivation to help others.
The discussion also touches on how setting dynamic goals rather than static ones can be more effective for achieving motivation. Huang emphasizes the importance of recognizing that our relationships and motivations can shift over time, and that both supportive relationships and a sense of competition can serve as motivators in different phases of goal pursuit.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Portraying robots as heroic figures in disaster response scenarios can actually decrease people's motivation to help others or engage in prosocial behavior.
- Humanizing robots by highlighting traits like vulnerability, autonomy, and decision-making ability can increase people's emotional connection to robots and inspire more prosocial behavior.
- Setting goals as a dynamic process that allows for adjustments and shifts in approach is more effective for achieving motivation than viewing goals as static.
- Relationships can serve as either supportive motivators or sources of competition at different phases of goal pursuit.
- Companies designing and marketing robots should consider incorporating more human-like characteristics to increase emotional resonance and prosocial impacts.
- As AI and robots become more integrated into society, managing people's perceptions of them as autonomous beings may be important for preserving human motivation and caring behaviors.
- Storytelling techniques used in media to build emotional connections to characters could be applied to robot design and marketing to foster more inspiring human-robot relationships.
- Embodying qualities like "grace" in robot functionality and presentation may increase people's ability to relate to robots in positive ways.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “If using robots lowers our intention to help others, it could have a pretty big negative social impact.“ by Szu-chi Huang
- “Thinking about goal pursuit as a dynamic process allow us to reset and update our goals, change how we approach our goals, change who we want to pull in or distance ourselves from, so we can be successful at our goals.“ by Szu-chi Huang
- “So when we highlight how robots can be vulnerable as well, such as their chip can get burned out during a disaster response or a rescue, and they literally can die, basically cannot be used again, then we found that knowing that the robots actually did contribute to a disaster response turned out to be more inspiring than if we don't introduce those information.“ by Szu-chi Huang
- “So by highlighting those similarities, we could make them more humanized, even though they are not fully functioning like a human.“ by Szu-chi Huang
Entities
Company
Product
Organization
Movie
Person
Episode Information
If/Then: Research findings to help us navigate complex issues in business, leadership, and society
Stanford GSB
5/1/24
Whether or not robots can feel is a question that, at least for now, might be better left to the philosophers. But what’s becoming increasingly clear, says Associate Professor Szu-chi Huang, is that robots do have the capacity to make us feel.
In this episode of If/Then: Business, Leadership, Society, Huang delves into the effect that robots can have not just on our emotions, but on our behavior.
Huang’s research shows that when people witness people helping others, they’re inspired to do the same. This is what she calls “pro-social” behavior. But she wondered: what happens when a robot is the one lending a helping hand? Are people inspired to by machines?
To find out, Huang designed a study where participants were shown various news reports about natural disasters and the measures being taken in response. In some stories, the “heroes” were human first responders; in others, they were robots.
“In both cases, we [explained] in detail what those heroes were doing,” says Huang. Whether dragging survivors out of ruins after an earthquake or disinfecting hospitals amidst a surging COVID-19 pandemic, “The actions are exactly the same, but the heroes are different.”
Following test subjects’ exposure to these stories, Huang measured their willingness to engage in pro-social behavior, like donating to support children in need. What she found was those who saw robot heroes were significantly less likely to donate than those who saw humans take the same actions. “The robot stories actually make people feel less inspired,” says Huang. “And that has important consequences. If using robots lowers our intention to help others, it could have a pretty big negative social impact.”
So what do we do as AI and robots play an increasing role in our lives? How do we embrace their benefits without downgrading our humanity and pro-sociability in the process? On this episode of If/Then, Huang explores how “humanizing” robots — highlighting their vulnerability, autonomy, and finitude — helps us connect with them and ourselves more deeply.
Takeaways
- We are inspired to help people when we see others doing so. But what if it’s robots lending a helping hand? Are we still motivated to also help?
- How we “humanize” robots — choosing features that highlight their vulnerability, autonomy, and finitude — could help us connect with them and ourselves more deeply.
More Resources:
- Robots or Humans for Disaster Response? Impact on Consumer Prosociality and Possible Explanations, Journal of Consumer Psychology
- Think Fast, Talk Smart: The Podcast: From Dreaming to Doing: How We Set and Achieve Goals
From Stanford GSB Insights:
- Why We See Rescue Robots as Helpers, Not Heroes
- Redefining Success: Adopt the Journey Mindset to Move Forward
If/Then is a podcast from Stanford Graduate School of Business that examines research findings that can help us navigate the complex issues we face in business, leade