Humans take the visuospatial perspective of robots and objects that imply social presence

Bibliographic Data

ID9405955
AuthorsBasil Wahn (0000-0002-0318-7160, Ruhr University Bochum, corresponding author), Eva Wiese (0000-0002-0322-1250, Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology)
Year2025
Volume254
Pages104801-104801
Publication date2025-02-18
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueActa Psychologica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-6918 • E-ISSN: 1873-6297
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.actpsy.2025.104801
PMID39970738
OpenAlexW4407689161
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited24

Visual perspective-taking (VPT) plays a crucial role in social interactions. Although the mechanisms behind VPT have been thoroughly studied in human-human interactions, there are only a few studies examining whether humans can also adopt the visuospatial perspective of machines such as robots or objects that have an implied social presence. Thus far, earlier work suggested that a human-like appearance is a major factor determining VPT. In the present study, we isolate the social presence aspect that is inherent to a human-like appearance to specifically assess whether the social presence on its own is sufficient to trigger VPT. In particular, we test whether participants can adopt the visuospatial perspective of an object that implies a social presence (i.e., a camera) and compare findings to an earlier study, in which we tested whether participants adopt the visuospatial perspective of a robot. We find that participants adopt the visuospatial perspective of a camera and that the magnitude of these effects do not differ from VPT effects for robots. These results expand on previous findings on this topic by showing that an object, which is associated with an implied social presence can already trigger VPT effects. Moreover, these findings are informative for the design of cost-effective social robots as camera-like features can already effectively trigger VPT mechanisms, which are highly relevant for smooth social interactions, and thus more costly human-like features are not necessarily required

Cognitive psychology · Cognitive science · Empathy · Perspective (graphical · Perspective-taking · Robot · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Psychology · Robot Manipulation and Learning · Robotics and Automated Systems · Social Psychology · Social Robot Interaction and HRI

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access