Anthropomorphism
A study (published in the Public Library of Science) by Soren Krach and Tilo Kircher (”Can Machines Think?“) used functional magnetic-resonance imaging to find out how people’s brains respond to various sorts of robots.
The researchers gave volunteers some laptop computers and asked them to play a “prisoner’s dilemma” game against 4 different opponents: (1) a laptop on its own, (2) a laptop in which the keys were pressed by a pair of robotic hands without a body, (3) a humanoid robot and (4) a human.
The participants were not actually playing an opponent. Instead, they were fed a random series of moves.
A prisoner’s dilemma game involves choosing whether to co-operate with the other player or betray him. Co-operation brings the best outcome, but trying to co-operate when the other player betrays you brings the worst. The game thus requires each player to try to get into the mind of the other, in order to predict what he might do. This sort of thinking tends to increase activity in parts the medial prefrontal cortex and the right temporo-parietal junction. The scanner showed that the more human-like the supposed opponent, the more such neural activity increased. A questionnaire also revealed that the volunteers enjoyed the games most when they played human-like opponents, whom they perceived to be more intelligent.