We measured
event-related potentials of human participants who were observing
pictures of painful or non-painful situations
with human hands or robot hands (Fig. 1).
(November 3, 2015)
Abstract
This study provides the first physiological evidence of
humans’ ability to empathize with robot pain and highlights the difference in
empathy for humans and robots. We performed electroencephalography in 15
healthy adults who observed either human- or robot-hand pictures in painful or
non-painful situations such as a finger cut by a knife. We found that the
descending phase of the P3 component was larger for the painful stimuli than
the non-painful stimuli, regardless of whether the hand belonged to a human or
robot. In contrast, the ascending phase of the P3 component at the
frontal-central electrodes was increased by painful human stimuli but not
painful robot stimuli, though the interaction of ANOVA was not significant, but
marginal. These results suggest that we empathize with humanoid robots in late
top-down processing similarly to human others. However, the beginning of the
top-down process of empathy is weaker for robots than for humans.