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Children's perceptions of the moral worth of live agents, robots, and inanimate objects
Kristyn Sommer1, Mark Nielsen2, Madeline Draheim3
1Early Cognitive Development Centre, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia; School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia.
Insights
Children grant robots more moral concern than inanimate objects but less than living beings, with this developing with age. This moral consideration is linked to children
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Robotics Ethics
- Moral Philosophy
Background:
- Understanding children's moral reasoning is crucial for navigating human-robot interactions.
- Previous research has not fully explored children's moral concern for artificial entities like robots.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how children aged 4-10 perceive the moral worth of robots compared to living and nonliving entities.
- To examine the role of children's attribution of mental states in their moral judgments of robots.
Main Methods:
- Children (N=126) watched videos depicting harm to robots, living, and nonliving entities.
- Participants rated the moral concern for each agent after witnessing physical harm.
- Children's tendency to ascribe mental life to entities was assessed and correlated with moral concern.
Main Results:
- Children showed greater moral concern for living entities, followed by robots, and then nonliving entities.
- This distinction became more pronounced with increasing age.
- Attributing mental life to robots predicted moral concern, but only for certain agents and judgments.
Conclusions:
- Children perceive robots as occupying a middle moral ground between living and nonliving things.
- The tendency to attribute mental states partially explains children's moral concern for robots.
- Moral worth is a complex, multifaceted concept influenced by entity type and age.
Abstract:
This study examined children's moral concern for robots relative to living and nonliving entities. Children (4-10 years of age, N = 126) watched videos of six different entities having a box placed over them that was subsequently struck by a human hand. Children were subsequently asked to rate the moral worth of each agent relating to physical harm. Children afforded robotic entities less moral concern than living entities but afforded them more moral concern than nonliving entities, and these effects became more pronounced with age. Children's tendency to ascribe mental life to robotic and nonliving entities (but not living entities) predicted moral concern for these entities. However, when asked to make moral judgments relating to giving the agent away, children did not distinguish between nonliving and robotic agents and no age-related changes were identified. Moreover, the tendency to ascribe mental life was predictive of moral concern only for some agents but not others. Overall, the findings suggest that children consider robotic entities to occupy a middle moral ground between living and nonliving entities and that this effect is partly explained by the tendency to ascribe mental life to such agents. They also demonstrate that moral worth is a complex multifaceted concept that does not demonstrate a clear pattern across different ontological categories.