Research Unit On Theory of Mind, Department of Psychology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy.
Research Unit On Robopsychology in the Lifespan, Department of Psychology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2023 Jul 11;13(1):11242. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-38399-w.
Peer pressure can influence risk-taking behavior and it is particularly felt during adolescence. With artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly present in a range of everyday human contexts, including virtual environments, it is important to examine whether AI can have an impact on human's decision making processes and behavior. By using the balloon analogue risk task (BART) evaluating propensity to take risk, in this study 113 adolescents' risk-taking behavior was measured when playing alone and in the presence of either a robot avatar or human avatar. In the avatar conditions, participants performed the BART while the avatars either (1) verbally incited risk-taking or (2) discouraged risk-taking (experimental tasks). Risk-taking behavior in the BART was assessed in terms of total number of pumps, gain and explosions. Tendency to impulsivity was also evaluated, as well as the effects of age and gender on risky behavior. The main finding showed a significant effect of both avatars on risk-taking tendency, with riskier behavior during incitement than discouragement conditions, the latter being also substantially different from the playing-alone condition. The results of this study open up new questions in a very sensitive and timely topic and offer various insights into the effect of nudging on adolescents' behavior in virtual contexts.
同辈压力会影响冒险行为，这种影响在青少年时期尤为明显。随着人工智能（AI）在包括虚拟环境在内的各种日常人类环境中越来越普及，研究 AI 是否会对人类的决策过程和行为产生影响变得非常重要。本研究使用气球模拟风险任务（BART）评估冒险倾向，通过该任务测量了 113 名青少年在独自和面对机器人化身或人类化身时的冒险行为。在化身条件下，参与者在化身（1）口头煽动冒险或（2）劝阻冒险（实验任务）的情况下完成 BART。通过总泵数、收益和爆炸来评估 BART 中的冒险行为。冲动倾向也得到了评估，同时还评估了年龄和性别对冒险行为的影响。主要发现表明，两个化身都对冒险倾向有显著影响，在煽动条件下的冒险行为比劝阻条件下更冒险，后者与独自玩游戏的条件也有很大不同。这项研究的结果在一个非常敏感和及时的话题上提出了新的问题，并为推动对青少年在虚拟环境中的行为的影响提供了各种见解。
