Management and Organizations Department, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.
Department of Management and Organization, National University of Singapore.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2023 Dec;152(12):3344-3358. doi: 10.1037/xge0001443. Epub 2023 Jul 24.
Over the last decade, robots continue to infiltrate the workforce, permeating occupations that once seemed immune to automation. This process seems to be inevitable because robots have ever-expanding capabilities. However, drawing from theories of cultural evolution and social learning, we propose that robots may have limited influence in domains that require high degrees of "credibility"; here we focus on the automation of religious preachers as one such domain. Using a natural experiment in a recently automated Buddhist temple (Study 1) and a fully randomized experiment in a Taoist temple (Study 2), we consistently show that religious adherents perceive robot preachers-and the institutions which employ them-as less credible than human preachers. This lack of credibility explains reductions in religious commitment after people listen to robot (vs. human) preachers deliver sermons. Study 3 conceptually replicates this finding in an online experiment and suggests that religious elites require perceived minds (agency and patiency) to be credible, which is partly why robot preachers inspire less credibility than humans. Our studies support cultural evolutionary theories of religion and suggest that escalating religious automation may induce religious decline. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
在过去的十年中，机器人不断渗透到劳动力市场中，涉足那些曾经似乎无法实现自动化的职业。这一过程似乎是不可避免的，因为机器人的功能不断扩展。然而，我们从文化进化和社会学习理论中得到启示，认为机器人在需要高度“可信度”的领域可能影响力有限；在这里，我们关注宗教布道者的自动化，作为这样一个领域。我们通过一个最近自动化的佛教寺庙的自然实验（研究 1）和一个道教寺庙的完全随机实验（研究 2），一致表明，宗教信徒认为机器人布道者——以及雇佣他们的机构——不如人类布道者可信。这种缺乏可信度解释了人们在听机器人（与人类）布道者布道后宗教承诺的减少。研究 3 在一个在线实验中对这一发现进行了概念复制，并表明宗教精英需要被认为具有心智（能动性和耐心）才具有可信度，这也是为什么机器人布道者不如人类布道者可信的部分原因。我们的研究支持宗教的文化进化理论，并表明不断升级的宗教自动化可能会导致宗教衰落。
