Mind-Reading and Behavior-Reading against Agents with and without Anthropomorphic Features in a Competitive Situation

Frontiers in Psychology

Kazunori Terada¹ 

关键词: mind-reading;    behavior-reading;    competitive game;    behavioral variability;    robotics;    human robot interaction;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01071

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Humans use two distinct cognitive strategies separately to understand and predict other humans' behavior. One is mind-reading, in which an internal state such as an intention or an emotional state is assumed to be a source of a variety of behaviors. The other is behavior-reading, in which an actor's behavior is modeled based on stimulus-response associations without assuming internal states behind the behavior. We hypothesize that anthropomorphic features are key for an observer switching between these two cognitive strategies in a competitive situation. We provide support for this hypothesis through two studies using four agents with different appearances. We show that only a human agent was thought to possess both the ability to generate a variety of behaviors and internal mental states, such as minds and emotions (Study 1). We also show that humans used mixed (opposing) strategies against a human agent and exploitative strategies against the agents with mechanical appearances when they played a repeated zero-sum game (Study 2). Our findings show that humans understand that human behavior is varied; that humans have internal states, such as minds and emotions; that the behavior of machines is governed by a limited number of fixed rules; and that machines do not possess internal mental states. Our findings also suggest that the function of mind-reading is to trigger a strategy for use against agents with variable behavior and that humans exploit others who lack behavioral variability based on behavior-reading in a competitive situation.

【 授权许可】

CC BY