Eva Wiese

Technische Universität Berlin | TUB

With the rising use of social robots, it is important to understand how to evaluate their effects on human cognition. Thus, we aimed to implicitly measure prosociality towards robots (i.e., the tendency to impart rewards to robots), using a conflict-monitoring paradigm. Here, participants completed a gambling task where they “Won” or “Lost” gambles...

When interacting with groups of robots, we tend to perceive them as a homogenous group where all group members have similar capabilities. This overgeneralization of capabilities is potentially due to a lack of perceptual experience with robots or a lack of motivation to see them as individuals (i.e., individuation). This can undermine trust and per...

While we applaud the careful breakdown by Clark and Fischer of the representation of social robots held by the human user, we emphasise that a neurocognitive perspective is crucial to fully capture how people perceive and construe social robots at the behavioural and brain levels.

To combat the spread of the COVID-19 virus, countries enforced quarantines, physical and social restrictions on people. These restrictions left many feeling isolated and lonely due to prolonged quarantines and lockdowns. This raises questions about using robots as social support to alleviate these symptoms, while still complying with restrictions a...

To combat the spread of the COVID-19 virus, countries enforced quarantines, physical and social restrictions on people. These restrictions left many feeling isolated and lonely due to prolonged quarantines and lockdowns. This raises questions about using robots as social support to alleviate these symptoms, while still complying with restrictions a...

Robot faces often differ from human faces in terms of their facial features (e.g., lack of eyebrows) and spatial relationships between these features (e.g., disproportionately large eyes), which can influence the degree to which social brain [i.e., Fusiform Face Area (FFA), Superior Temporal Sulcus (STS); Haxby et al., 2000 ] areas process them as...

Beyond conscious beliefs and goals, automatic cognitive processes shape our social encounters, and interactions with complex machines like social robots are no exception. With this in mind, it is surprising that research in human-robot interaction (HRI) almost exclusively uses explicit measures, such as subjective ratings and questionnaires, to ass...

Robots are becoming more available for workplace collaboration, but many questions remain. Are people actually willing to assign collaborative tasks to robots? And if so, exactly which tasks will they assign to what kinds of robots? Here we leverage psychological theories on person-job fit and mind perception to investigate task assignment in human...

With the rise of automated and autonomous agents, research examining Trust in Automation (TiA) has attracted considerable attention over the last few decades. Trust is a rich and complex construct which has sparked a multitude of measures and approaches to study and understand it. This comprehensive narrative review addresses known methods that hav...

The present chapter provides an overview from the perspective of social cognitive neuroscience (SCN) regarding theory of mind (ToM) and joint attention (JA) as crucial mechanisms of social cognition and discusses how these mechanisms have been investigated in social interaction with artificial agents. In the final sections, the chapter reviews comp...

Humans are increasingly turning to non-human agents for advice. Therefore, it is important to investigate if human-likeness of a robot affects advice-seeking. In this experiment, participants chose robot advisors with different levels of human-likeness when completing either social or analytical tasks, and the task was either known or unknown when...

People process human faces configurally—as a Gestalt or integrated whole—but perceive objects in terms of their individual features. As a result, faces—but not objects—are more difficult to process when presented upside down versus upright. Previous research demonstrates that this inversion effect is not observed when recognizing previously seen an...

Social signals, such as changes in gaze direction, are essential cues to predict others’ mental states and behaviors (i.e., mentalizing). Studies show that humans can mentalize with nonhuman agents when they perceive a mind in them (i.e., mind perception). Robots that physically and/or behaviorally resemble humans likely trigger mind perception, wh...

Social agents rely on the ability to use feedback to learn and modify their behavior. The extent to which this happens in social contexts depends on motivational, cognitive and/or affective parameters. For instance, feedback-associated learning occurs at different rates when the outcome of an action (e.g., winning or losing in a gambling task) affe...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-021-00902-z

Social species rely on the ability to modulate feedback-monitoring in social contexts to adjust one's actions and obtain desired outcomes. When being awarded positive outcomes during a gambling task, feedback-monitoring is attenuated when strangers are rewarded, as less value is assigned to the awarded outcome. This difference in feedback-monitorin...

Mind perception, or the tendency to ascribe agency (i.e., the ability to plan and act) and experience (i.e., the ability to sense and feel) to others, is an important design consideration for human-robot inter-action since an agent’s mind status affects how we interact with it and how we interpret its behavior. The current study examines whether ob...

The development of AI that can socially engage with humans is exciting to imagine, but such advanced algorithms might prove harmful if people are no longer able to detect when they are interacting with non-humans in online environments. Because we cannot fully predict how socially intelligent AI will be applied, it is important to conduct research...

Objective: Human problem solvers possess the ability to outsource parts of their mental processing onto cognitive "helpers" (cognitive offloading). However, suboptimal decisions regarding which helper to recruit for which task occur frequently. Here, we investigate if understanding and adjusting a specific subcomponent of mental models-beliefs abo...

Understanding and reacting to others' nonverbal social signals, such as changes in gaze direction (i.e., gaze cue), are essential for social interactions, as it is important for processes such as joint attention and mentalizing. Although attentional orienting in response to gaze cues has a strong reflexive component, accumulating evidence shows tha...

Attentional orienting to nonverbal social signals is an important social behavior that humans engage in. While prior work still debates if attentional orienting to others’ gaze is reflexive or volitional, studies suggest that it depends on the observer’s cognitive resources. Here, we illustrate that when humans exert increased mental effort when tr...

Social species rely on the ability to modulate feedback-monitoring in a variety of social contexts with the goal to adjust one’s actions and subsequently obtain desired outcomes. When being awarded positive outcomes during a gambling task, feedback-monitoring is attenuated when strangers are rewarded, as less value is assigned to the awarded outcom...

Social signals, such as changes in gaze direction, are essential cues to predict others’ mental states and behaviors (i.e., mentalizing). Studies show that humans can mentalize with non-human agents when they perceive a mind in them (i.e., mind perception). Robots that physically and/or behaviorally resemble humans likely trigger mind perception, w...

Robots are increasingly envisaged as our future cohabitants. However, while considerable progress has been made in recent years in terms of their technological realization, the ability of robots to inter-act with humans in an intuitive and social way is still quite limited. An important challenge for social robotics is to determine how to design ro...

Humans frequently use external (environment-based) strategies to supplement their internal (brain-based) thought. In the memory domain, whether to solve a problem using external or internal retrieval depends on the accessibility of external information, judgment of mnemonic ability, and on the problem's visual features. It likely also depends on th...

When incorporating the environment into mental processing (cf., cognitive offloading), one creates novel cognitive strategies that have the potential to improve task performance. Improved performance can, for example, mean faster problem solving, more accurate solutions, or even higher grades at university [1]. Although cognitive offloading has fre...

When incorporating the environment into mental processing (cf., cognitive offloading), one creates novel cognitive strategies that have the potential to improve task performance. Improved performance can, for example, mean faster problem solving, more accurate solutions, or even higher grades at university.1 Although cognitive offloading has freque...

When we interact with others, we use nonverbal behavior such as changes in gaze direction to make inferences about what people think or what they want to do next – a process called mentalizing. Previous studies have shown that how we react to others’ gaze signals depends on how much “mind” we ascribe to the gazer, and that this process of mind perc...

Autonomous systems are rapidly gaining the capacity to recognize their own errors and utilize social strategies to mitigate the trust deficit that accompanies those errors. While previous research has catalogued the effects of trust repair attempts in human-human relationships, much remains unknown about the consequences of similar strategies when...

As social robots are increasingly introduced into our everyday lives, an emphasis on improving the human-robot interaction (HRI), particularly through increased mind perception, is necessary. Substantial research has been conducted that demonstrates how manipulations to a robot’s physical appearance or behavior increases mind perception, yet little...

Robotic agents are becoming increasingly pervasive in society, and have already begun advancing fields such as healthcare, education, and industry. However, despite their potential to do good for society, many people still feel unease when imaging a future where robots and humans work and live together in shared environments, partly because robots...

The potential for social robots to provide assistance to those in need continues to increase though optimal design for user acceptance and engagement continues to be elusive. The design of social robots for user motivation specifically has not been well researched yet evidence does indicate that virtual agents can be motivational. Theory of mind an...

This study examines to what extent mixed groups of computers and humans are able to produce conformity effects in human interaction partners. Previous studies reveal that nonhuman groups can induce conformity under certain circumstances, but it is unknown to what extent mixed groups of human and nonhuman agents are able to produce similar effects....

Research suggests that humans and autonomous agents can be more effective when working together as a combined unit rather than as individual entities. However, most research has focused on autonomous agent design characteristics while ignoring the importance of social interactions and team dynamics. Two experiments examined how the perception of te...

Humanlike but not perfectly human agents frequently evoke feelings of eeriness, a phenomenon termed the Uncanny Valley (UV). The Categorical Perception Hypothesis proposes that effects associated with the UV are due to uncertainty as to whether to categorize agents falling into the valley as “human” or “nonhuman”. However, since UV studies have tra...

When engaged in cognitive tasks, humans possess the ability to outsource parts of their cognitive processing onto the environment (Cognitive Offloading). Although cognitive offloading is no novel approach, it will likely gain relevance in an increasingly technologized world that supplies an abundance of computerized helpers like smartphones or robo...

Humanlike but not perfectly human agents frequently evoke feelings of eeriness, a phenomenon termed the Uncanny Valley (UV). The Categorical Perception Hypothesis proposes that effects associated with the UV are due to uncertainty as to whether to categorize agents falling into the valley as “human” or “nonhuman”. However, since UV studies have tra...

Humans frequently use external (i.e., environment-based) strategies to supplement their internal (i.e., brain-based) thought. Frequency of external strategy use has been shown to depend on per-formance characteristics of the external strategy as well as on task difficulty. It is less clear whether people adjust external strategy use also based on p...

In social interactions, we rely on non-verbal cues like gaze direction to understand the behaviour of others. How we react to these cues is determined by the degree to which we believe that they originate from an entity with a mind capable of having internal states and showing intentional behaviour, a process called mind perception . While prior wo...

As nonhuman agents are integrated into the workforce, the question becomes to what extent advice seeking in technology-infused environments depends on the perceived fit between agent and task and whether humans are willing to consider advice from nonhuman agents. In this experiment, participants sought advice from human, robot, or computer agents w...

Knowing the internal states of others is essential to predicting behavior in social interactions and requires that the general characteristic of "having a mind" is granted to our interaction partners. Mind perception is a highly automatic process and can potentially cause a cognitive conflict when interacting with agents whose mind status is ambigu...

Most research on human cognition has focused on processes “inside the box”. Recently, researchers questioned this monopoly, promoting the relevance of cognitive processing “outside the box”, for instance, when using a GPS to navigate. For processing that is distributed between internal and external resources to work efficiently, humans need good he...

As humanoid robots become more advanced and commonplace, the average user may perceive their robotic companion as human-like entities that can make social decisions, such as the deliberate choice to act fairly or selfishly. It is important for scientists and designers to consider how this will affect our interactions with social robots. The current...

Social robots with expressive gaze have positive effects on human-robot interaction. In particular, research suggests that when robots are programmed to express introverted or extroverted gaze behavior, individuals enjoy interacting more with robots that match their personality. However, how this affects social-cognitive performance during human-ro...

Objective: A distributed cognitive system is a system in which cognitive processes are distributed between brain-based internal and environment-based external resources. In the current experiment, we examined the influence of metacognitive processes on external resource use (i.e., cognitive offloading) in such systems. Background: High-tech work...

Objective: The authors investigate whether nonhuman agents, such as computers or robots, produce a social conformity effect in human operators and examine to what extent potential conformist behavior varies as a function of the human-likeness of the group members and the type of task that has to be performed. Background: People conform due to no...

In social interactions, we rely on nonverbal cues like gaze direction to understand the behavior of others. How we react to these cues is affected by whether they are believed to originate from an entity with a mind, capable of having internal states (i.e., mind perception). While prior work has established a set of neural regions linked to social-...

Perceived humanness affects how others behave towards artificial agents, and can be examined with imitation games, where participants interact with either a human or an artificial agent and then have to guess who they interacted with. The current experiment uses the multiplayer, socially interactive videogame Don't Starve Together to examine whethe...

Gaze following, or our ability to attend to where others are looking can be top-down controlled by context information about the social relevance of the gaze signal. In particular, it has been shown that gaze signals are followed more strongly when the gazer is believed to have a mind with the ability to show intentional behavior (i.e., human) comp...

In human-human interaction, we use information from gestures, facial expressions and gaze direction to make inferences about what interaction partners think, feel or intend to do next. Observing changes in gaze direction triggers shifts of attention to gazed-at locations and helps establish shared attention between gazer and observer - a prerequisi...

As humanoid robots become more advanced and commonplace, the average user may find themselves in the position of wondering if their robotic companion truly possesses a mind. It is important for scientists and designers to consider how this will likely affect our interactions with social robots. The current paper explores how social decision making...

Perceived humanness affects how others behave towards artificial agents, and can be examined with imitation games, where participants interact with either a human or an artificial agent and then have to guess who they interacted with. The current experiment uses the multiplayer, socially interactive video game "Don’t Starve Together" to examine whe...

Most research on human cognition has focused on processes “inside the box”. Recently, researchers questioned this monopoly, promoting the relevance of cognitive processing “outside the box”, for in- stance, when using a GPS to navigate. For processing that is distributed between internal and external resources to work efficiently, humans need good...

Social robots with expressive gaze have positive effects on human-robot interaction. In particular, research suggests that when robots are programmed to express introverted or extraverted gaze behavior, individuals enjoy interacting more with robots that match their personality. However, how this affects social-cognitive performance during human-ro...

Gaze following, or our ability to attend to where others are looking can be top-down controlled by context information about the social relevance of the gaze signal. In particular, it has been shown that gaze signals are followed more strongly when the gazer is believed to have a mind with the ability to show intentional behavior (i.e., human) comp...

Knowing the internal states of others is essential to predicting behavior in social interactions and requires that the general characteristic of ‘having a mind’ is granted to our interaction partners. Mind perception is a highly automatic process and can potentially cause a cognitive conflict when interacting with agents whose mind status is ambigu...

In social interactions, we rely on nonverbal cues like gaze direction to understand the behavior of others. How we react to these cues is determined by the degree to which we believe that they originate from an entity with a mind capable of having internal states and showing intentional behavior, a process called mind perception. While prior work h...

In social interactions, we rely on nonverbal cues like gaze direction to understand the behavior of others. How we react to these cues is affected by whether they are believed to originate from an entity with a mind, capable of having internal states (i.e., mind perception). While prior work has established a set of neural regions linked to social-...

Objective: To investigate whether non-human agents, such as computers or social robots, produce a social conformity effect within human operators and to what extent potential conformist behavior varies as a function of the human-likeness of the group members and the type of task that had to be performed. Background: People conform due to normative...

As nonhuman agents become integrated into the workforce, the question becomes whether humans are willing to consider their advice, and to what extent advice-seeking depends on the perceived agent-task fit. To examine this, participants performed social and analytical tasks and received advice from human, robot, and computer agents in two conditions...

Objective: A distributed cognitive system is a system in which cognitive processes are distributed between brain-based internal and environment-based external resources. In the current exper-iment, we examined the influence of metacognitive processes on external resource use (i.e., cog-nitive offloading) in such systems. Background: High-tech worki...

When we interact with others, we make inferences about their internal states (i.e., intentions, emotions) and use this information to understand and predict their behavior. Reasoning about the internal states of others is referred to as mentalizing, and presupposes that our social partners are believed to have a mind. Seeing mind in others increase...

Robots are increasingly envisaged as our future cohabitants. However, while considerable progress has been made in recent years in terms of their technological realization, the ability of robots to interact with humans in an intuitive and social way is still quite limited. An important challenge for social robotics is to determine how to design rob...

As interactions with non-human agents increase, it is important to understand and predict the consequences of human interactions with them. Social facilitation has a longstanding history within the realm of social psychology and is characterized by the presence of other humans having a beneficial effect on performance on easy tasks and inhibiting p...

When interacting with other entities, we make inferences about their internal states using our own minds as models (i.e., mentalizing). This process relies on the rapid, automatic perception of a mind. In two experiments, we investigate whether these automatic processes of mind perception are impaired when interacting with agents that are not easil...

In social robotics, the term Uncanny Valley describes the phenomenon that linear increases in human-likeness of an agent do not entail an equally linear increase in favorable reactions towards that agent. Instead, a pronounced dip or ‘valley’ at around 70% human-likeness emerges. One currently popular view to explain this drop in favorable reaction...

The Uncanny Valley (UV) hypothesis states that agents that look humanlike but are not perfectly human elicit feelings of eeriness in human observers, associated with negative ratings of mind, trust and likability. However, empirical evidence for the UV is sparse and individual dispositions are not considered to moderate the UV. The present study as...

Gaze following occurs automatically in social interactions, but the degree to which gaze is followed depends on whether an agent is perceived to have a mind, making its behavior socially more relevant for the interaction. Mind perception also modulates the attitudes we have towards others, and determines the degree of empathy, pro-sociality and mor...

Group Attributing mind to interaction partners has been shown to increase the social relevance we ascribe to others' actions and to modulate the amount of attention dedicated to them. However, it remains unclear how the relationship between higher-order mind attribution and lower-level attention processes is established in the brain. In this neuroi...

Human-like appearance has been shown to positively affect perception of and attitudes towards robotic agents. In particular, the more human-like robots look, the more participants are willing to ascribe human-like states to them (i.e., having a mind, emotions, agency). The positive effect of human-likeness on agent ratings, however, does not transl...

Trust in automation is an important topic in the field of human factors and has a substantial impact on both attitudes towards and performance with automated systems. One variable that has been shown to influence trust is the degree of human-likeness that is displayed by the automated system with the main finding being that increased human-like app...

Previous research has demonstrated reliable effects of social pressure on conformity and social decision-making in human-human interaction. The current study investigates whether non-human agents are also capable of inducing similar social pressure effects; in particular, we examined whether the degree of physical human-likeness of an agent (i.e.,...