Early 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.
Early Cognitive Development Centre, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia; Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park 2006, South Africa.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2019 Nov;187:104656. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.06.009. Epub 2019 Jul 30.
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.
本研究考察了儿童对机器人相对于有生命和无生命实体的道德关注。儿童（4-10 岁，N=126）观看了六个不同实体的视频，这些实体的身上被放置了一个盒子，随后被人手击打。之后，孩子们被要求对每个代理与身体伤害相关的道德价值进行评分。与有生命的实体相比，儿童给予机器人实体的道德关注较少，但给予他们的道德关注比无生命的实体多，而且随着年龄的增长，这些影响变得更加明显。儿童将心理生命归因于机器人和无生命实体（但不是有生命的实体）的倾向预测了他们对这些实体的道德关注。然而，当被要求对与代理人有关的道德判断进行判断时，儿童并没有区分无生命和机器人代理，也没有发现与年龄相关的变化。此外，将心理生命归因于代理的倾向仅对某些代理具有预测性，而对其他代理则没有。总的来说，这些发现表明，儿童认为机器人实体处于有生命和无生命实体之间的道德中间地带，这种影响部分归因于将心理生命归因于此类代理的倾向。它们还表明，道德价值是一个复杂的多方面概念，在不同的本体论类别中并没有表现出清晰的模式。
