Do people have a level of empathy for robots that's anywhere near the level of empathy they might have for their fellow humans?

Researchers at the Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan recently conducted a study find out, publishing their findings in Scientific Reports. According to their study, humans do in fact feel empathy when they see human-shaped objects, like a robot hand, get hurt, similar to how they would feel when a human hand gets hurt.

As a part of the study, 15 volunteers were shown 56 different photos that depicted first-person perspectives of a human-shaped robot hand in situations that could lead to pain and situations that aren't painful. Some images, for example, showed a human and a robotic hand being cut by a knife, while another showed a knife at a safe distance from the two hands. Researchers measured responses through electroencephalography or EEG devices, which measure neurological responses.

What the researchers found was that human observers had similar empathic responses to humans as they did robots. These responses are neurophysiological evidence of empathy, according to the researchers, and are attributed to the shape of the hand.

According to Hiroshi Ishiguro, a Japanese roboticist, the study could prove very helpful with the rise of things like companion bots or carebots, which are growing in popularity. Needing to feel empathy toward robots would depend on the application of the robots, of course, with empathy for robots being used in hospitals and schools being more important than empathy for robots being used in a car factory.

In the future, the researchers of this paper will test how empathy levels differ with differently shaped robots that might not look as much like a human. It will be interesting to see if empathy toward a robot directly corresponds with that robot's shape.

Via: Motherboard