Influence of perspective taking through robotic virtual agents on prosocial behavior

Abstract: Perspective taking, which allows people to imagine another's thinking and goals, is known to be an effective method for promoting prosocial behaviors in human-computer interactions. However, most of the previous studies have focused on simulating human-human interactions in the real world by offering participants experiences related to various moral tasks through the use of human-like virtual agents. In this study, we investigated whether taking the perspective of a different robot in a robot-altruistic task would influence the social behaviors of participants in a dictator game. Our findings showed that participants who watched the help-receiver view exhibited more altruistic behaviors toward a robot than those who watched the help-provider view. We also found that, after watching robots from two different viewpoints in the task, participants did not change their behavior toward another participant.