Being Manipulated by a Robot
New, German Research Confirms Robotic Manipulation Humans can be emotionally manipulated by robots. German scientists found that we humans have a strong tendency to give human-like attributes to machines. The scientists say, based on their research, interactive robots can emotionally manipulate people. It's robotic manipulation. Scientific Study Researchers from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany asked 89 volunteers to interact with a human-like robot under the pretext of helping it to become more intelligent. Turn It Off At the end of the interaction, the humans were asked by the researchers to turn off the robot. But the robot was programmed to beg the humans not to turn it off. 46 volunteers served as the control group and were aware of the set-up. 43 weren't aware. Of that group, 13 compiled with the begging robot. Many said they felt sorry for it. And, the rest of the "unaware" were much slower than the control group to decide whether