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Cited by 178Social Robot Interaction and HRIPsychology of Moral and Emotional JudgmentLiterary and Philosophical Studies

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 1 of the 1 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Do people hold a humanoid robot morally accountable for the harm it causes?

Kahn, Peter H., Kanda, Takayuki, Ishiguro, Hiroshi, Gill, Brian T., Ruckert, Jolina H., Shen, Solace, Gary, Heather E., Reichert, Aimee L., Freier, Nathan G., Severson, Rachel L.·2012·Proceedings of the seventh annual ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-Robot Interaction
DOI 10.1145/2157689.2157696
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Abstract

Robots will increasingly take on roles in our social lives where they can cause humans harm. When robots do so, will people hold robots morally accountable? To investigate this question, 40 undergraduate students individually engaged in a 15-minute interaction with ATR's humanoid robot, Robovie. The interaction culminated in a situation where Robovie incorrectly assessed the participant's performance in a game, and prevented the participant from winning a $20 prize. Each participant was then interviewed in a 50-minute session. Results showed that all of the participants engaged socially with Robovie, and many of them conceptualized Robovie as having mental/emotional and social attributes. Sixty-five percent of the participants attributed some level of moral accountability to Robovie. Statistically, participants held Robovie less accountable than they would a human, but more accountable than they would a vending machine. Results are discussed in terms of the New Ontological Category Hypothesis and robotic warfare.

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  • Participants who interacted with a humanoid robot that incorrectly assessed their performance perceived the robot as having emotional and social attributes.

    “In Kahn et al. (2012), participants who interacted with a humanoid robot that incorrectly assessed their performance perceived the robot as having emotional and social attributes.”

    From Understanding and Resolving Failures in Human-Robot Interaction: Literature Review and Model Development (2018) · cites this paper as Kahn et al., 2012

Citations

Cites

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    “In the HRI literature, it is clear that people engage with social robots in many social ways [9] [10] [11] [12], and also can attribute intentions and decision-making to robots [13].”
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Metadata

Authors
Kahn, P. H., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, H., Gill, B. T., Ruckert, J. H., Shen, S., Gary, H. E., Reichert, A. L., Freier, N. G., & Severson, R. L.
Affiliations
  • University of Washington (US)
  • Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (JP)
  • The University of Osaka (JP)
  • Seattle Pacific University (US)
  • Microsoft (United States) (US)
  • Western Washington University (US)
ORCID
Venue
Proceedings of the seventh annual ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-Robot Interaction
Publisher
ACM
Published
2012-03-05
Pages
33-40
DOI
10.1145/2157689.2157696
OpenAlex
W2141563716
Cited by
178
References
1
Citations by year
2026: 8 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 17 · 2019: 18 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 15 · 2013: 16 · 2012: 3
FWCI
23.46
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.acm.org/publications/policies/copyright_policy#Background (vor)
Locations
ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) (publishedVersion)
Funders
National Science Foundation
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
  • Social Sciences › Law › Literary and Philosophical Studies
Keywords
moral accountability, humanoid robots, anthropomorphism, human-robot interaction

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