Moral evaluation of Human and Robot Interactions in Japanese Preschoolers

Several empirical and theoretical studies have examined the role of robots in child-robot interaction, and they have shown that robotic agents could be perceived as social partners. Nonetheless, studies on moral development in preschoolers classically involve a human subject as violator of moral norms. No studies have ever analysed the situation in which the violator is a robotic agent. Investigating moral judgment to a moral transgression through use of the Happy Victimizer Task, and its effects on prosocial behaviour measured by means of the Dictator Game (DG), previous studies showed that children’s emotion attribution to a human victimizer can predict children’s altruistic behaviour. Following from these studies, which underline children’s sensitivity to violations of moral norms by a human partner, the present study aims at evaluating the effects of moral transgression on children’s moral judgment in Japanese preschoolers aged 5 years. Crucially, this study involved a child victimizer (CV) and a robot victimizer (RV). The present study aims to investigate the victimizer’s agent effect (Human or Robot) on children’s evaluation of two different video-recorded moral transgressions stories (Stealing and Not-Sharing) and on children’s altruistic behaviour measured through DG. The robot is judged worse than the human independent of the story; however, children attribute more positive emotion to the victimizer in the Not-Sharing story than Stealing story. The results on the DG showed no differences in children’s altruistic behaviour toward another human as a function of the victimizer’s agency, thus showing an equal distribution that is typical of this age. This data supports a decoupling between judgement and behaviour. Additionally, results on judgement support the hypothesis that children perceived the robot as a “perfect” machine or, at least, as a different kind of interactive entity.