Anthropomorphism describes the tendency to ascribe nonhuman agents with characteristics and capacities such as cognitions, intentions, or emotions. Due to the increased interest in social robotic, anthropomorphism has become a core concept of human-robot interaction (HRI) studies. However, the wide use of this concept resulted in an interchangeability of its definition along with a lack of integrative approaches. In the present study, we propose a framework of anthropomorphism encompassing three levels of integration: cultural (i.e. animism beliefs), individual (i.e. mentalization, spiritualization, humanization tendencies), and attributional (i.e. cognition, emotion, intention attributions). We also acknowledge the westernized bias of the current view of anthropomorphism and develop a cross-cultural approach. In two studies, participants from different cultures completed various tasks and questionnaires assessing their animism beliefs, individual tendencies to imbue robots with mental properties (i.e. mentalization), spirit (i.e. spiritualization), and consider them as more or less human (i.e. humanization). We also evaluated their attributions of mental anthropomorphic characteristics to robots (i.e. cognition, emotion, intention). Our results demonstrate, in both experiments, that the three levels model reliably explain the collected data and that culture modulates the integration point of the cultural beliefs at the individual level. In addition, in experiment 2, the analyses show a more anthropocentric view of the mind for Western than East-Asian participants do. As such, Western perception of robots depends more on humanization while mentalization is the core of the East-Asian participant model. We further discuss these results in relation to the anthropomorphism literature and argue for the use of integrative cross-cultural model in HRI research.
Cross-cultural framework of anthropomorphism toward robots. Differences across cultures and ontological limits in current frameworks.