Can I feel your pain? The biological and socio-cognitive factors shaping people’s empathy with social robots

The paper explores the ways in which the concept of empathy is interpreted and used in the fields of human-robot interaction studies and social robotics.

Empathy is a complex phenomena associated with the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Malinowska argues in favor of its use to study, analyze, and explain interactions between people and social robots. She demonstrates that people’s affective, somatic, and cognitive states can be triggered by observation or inference about the state of the robot. To support her position, she describes several studies indicating that people can experience emotional responses towards robots that are similar to those experienced towards other humans and that can be observed at the level of their beliefs, behaviors, and physiological (neuronal) responses. Thus, Malinowska notes that using the concept of empathy to study human-robot interactions can provide valuable insights into the phenomenon itself. However, researchers must carefully analyze the conclusions that result from using the term empathy outside the context of relations between biological beings.

Moreover, Malinowska presents arguments that factors from biological/evolutionary and socio-cognitive categories can facilitate or hinder a robot's anthropomorphization and its potential to incite empathy in people. The appearance and behavior of the robot, one’s worldview, and language can all influence the extent to which people anthropomorphize and empathize with robots. Additionally, universal psychological and cognitive mechanisms related to the dehumanization of others and the reduced level of empathizing with them can be modulated by socio-cognitive factors such as motivation, familiarity with the robot, and its history. In this regard, Malinowska highlights the importance of the sense of group membership with robots as a key factor modulating people's reactions. She also underlines that further research on the factors that shape people's empathy with robots is necessary. This is, for example, because these factors could affect not only the quality of people's interactions with robots but also our understanding and shaping of human intergroup relations.

Finally, researchers argue for the development of a pragmatic and normative framework for manipulating empathy in human-robot interactions. Such a framework should take into account the functions of the robot, the possibilities of abuse, and the impact of empathizing or lack of empathy with robots on society.