Humans are social animals with a strong need to establish and maintain a sense of interpersonal connection to others. The first factor in the SEEK model is sociality motivation, or the human desire for social connections. The Sociality, Effectance, Elicited Agent Knowledge Model of AnthropomorphismД®pley et al have proposed a 3-factor theory, called the Sociality, Effectance, Elicited agent Knowledge (SEEK) model, to explain why human beings anthropomorphize. As computers and robots become increasingly ubiquitous, our understanding of how we anthropomorphize robots in human robot interactions (HRI) will become more important as well. Instances of anthropomorphism occur all around us on a daily basis, from the tendency to imbue pets with human like traits to the attribution of human like characteristics to deities and even to personal computers. Introduction Anthropomorphism and the Sociality, Effectance, Elicited Agent Knowledge ModelДЄnthropomorphism can be defined as вЂњthe tendency to imbue the real or imagined behavior of nonhuman agents with human like characteristics, motivations, intentions, or emotionsвЂќ.

In retrospect, these outcomes may have occurred because the humanoid robot used here had a smaller overall stature than the nonhumanoid robot, perhaps making it seem more toylike and because subjects made attributions toward the person behind the remote-controlled robot rather than toward the robot itself. Finally, the ATS revealed the only gender effects in this study, with females reporting more endorsement of anthropomorphism for pets ( P=.02) and less for showing negative emotions toward anthropomorphized objects ( P<.001) if they had witnessed the humanoid rather than the nonhumanoid robot.Д¬onclusions: Contrary to our expectations, participants were less willing to make humanlike attributions toward a robot when its morphology was more humanlike and were more willing to make those attributions when they were told that the robot was being remotely controlled by a person rather than acting on its own.

The Fussel adjective checklist results showed that subjects were more willing to attribute humanlike social qualities to the remote controlled than the autonomous robot, F 1,91=5.30, P=.02. Results with the Epley adjectives indicated that participants were more willing to attribute humanlike behavioral traits to the nonhumanoid rather than the humanoid robot, F 1,91=5.76, P=.02. Results: Findings with the PERNOD scale indicated subjects did perceive the 2 robots differently, F 6,86=6.59, P<.001, which means the appearance manipulation was effective. After viewing the video, they completed 4 measures: perception to humanoid robots scale (PERNOD), the Epley anthropomorphic adjectives measure, the Fussel anthropomorphic adjective checklist, and the Anthropomorphic Tendencies Scale (ATS). Methods: Participants (N=99) were primed for agency or nonagency belief conditions and then saw a brief video depicting either a humanoid or nonhumanoid robot interacting with a confederate. We also sought to identify any role gender might play in anthropomorphizing the robot. In addition, we expected that inducing an agency belief to the effect that a robot was making its own decisions would increase anthropomorphism compared with a nonagency belief that the robot was being remotely controlled by a human. We expected a humanoid robot would be anthropomorphized to a greater extent than one that was nonhumanoid. Objective: The aim of this study was to explore factors influencing the anthropomorphism of robots, specifically the robotвЂ™s appearance (humanoid vs nonhumanoid) and agency (autonomous vs nonautonomous).

As anthropomorphism involves a person making attributions of human likeness toward a nonhuman object, this model implies that anthropomorphism can be influenced either by factors related to the person or the object. The three-factor theory of anthropomorphism, called the Sociality, Effectance, Elicited agent Knowledge model, guided this study.

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