REAL LIFE NEWS: HOLLYWOOD ROBOTS HELP EASE ANXIETY ABOUT REAL LIFE DROIDS
by Hazed
Watching movies about friendly robots could help to stem anxiety about using them, researchers from Penn State think.
They quizzed old people about their feelings towards robots in real life, and asked them to recall robots portrayed in films. Those who remembered more fictional robots had lower anxiety towards robots than seniors who didn’t remember so many.
The researchers say that being anxious about robots may influence older adults’ perception of how easy it is to operate robots and may affect their intentions to buy one. Making them less anxious may help them to accept robots as caregivers.
The robots that were remember the most included those from the films Bicentennial Man; Forbidden Planet; I, Robot; Lost In Space; Star Wars; The Terminator; Transformers and Wall-E.
Surprisingly, even remembering the evil film robots eased anxiety: memories of the Terminator were just as effective as those of C3PO. “One of the most surprising results in general was the more robot portrayals they could recall, regardless of the robot’s characteristics, actually led to more positive attitudes on robots and eventually more positive intentions to use a robot,” said one of the researchers. “So, it seems like the more media portrayals they can recall, the more likely their attitudes would be positive toward robots, rather than negative.”
The movie robots that inspired sympathy, or that looked most human-like, invoked the most positive feelings about robots. Lessons, there, for our future robot overlords: it doesn’t matter how evil you are so long as you look either human or cute!