Relationship between mind perception and responsibility in a collaborative task with an artifact

Abstract

Does a human think that an artifact should be responsible for failure in a collaborative task with the artifact? We aim to identify the relationship between responsibility and mind perception (MP) about the collaborative partner. We conducted experiments with three agent conditions: a human, humanoid robot, and computer. The result indicates that a subject thought that an agent with the higher MP items that are important abilities for the task (e.g., "Thought") is less responsible. It seems that the impression that \the argent acted for the success of the task" may reduce the responsibility. In addition, we found that negative change of the MP is correlated with the degree of the responsibility. This suggests that the betrayal of the subject's expectation of the partner through the task may increase responsibility.