The mind in the machine: Anthropomorphism increases trust in an autonomous vehicle

• Anthropomorphism of a car predicts trust in that car. • Trust is reflected in behavioral, physiological, and self-report measures. • Anthropomorphism also affects attributions of responsibility/punishment. • These findings shed light on human interaction with autonomous vehicles. a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o Sophisticated technology is increasingly replacing human minds to perform complicated tasks in domains ranging from medicine to education to transportation. We investigated an important theoretical determinant of people's willingness to trust such technology to perform competently—the extent to which a nonhuman agent is anthropomorphized with a humanlike mind—in a domain of practical importance, autonomous driving. Participants using a driving simulator drove either a normal car, an autonomous vehicle able to control steering and speed, or a comparable autonomous vehicle augmented with additional anthropomorphic features—name, gender , and voice. Behavioral, physiological, and self-report measures revealed that participants trusted that the vehicle would perform more competently as it acquired more anthropomorphic features. Technology appears better able to perform its intended design when it seems to have a humanlike mind. These results suggest meaningful consequences of humanizing technology, and also offer insights into the inverse process of objectifying humans. Introduction Technology is an increasingly common substitute for humanity. Sophisticated machines now perform tasks that once required a thoughtful human mind, from grading essays to diagnosing cancer to driving a car. As engineers overcome design barriers to creating such technology, important psychological barriers that users will face when using this technology emerge. Perhaps most important, will people be willing to trust competent technology to replace a human mind, such as a teacher's mind when grading essays, or a doctor's mind when diagnosing cancer, or their own mind when driving a car? Our research tests one important theoretical determinant of trust in any nonhuman agent: anthropomorphism (Waytz, Cacioppo, & Epley, 2010). Anthropomorphism is a process of inductive inference whereby people attribute to nonhumans distinctively human characteristics, particularly the capacity for rational thought (agency) and conscious feeling (experience; Gray, Gray, & Wegner, 2007). Philosophical definitions of personhood focus on these mental capacities as essential to being human (Dennett, 1978; Locke, 1997). Furthermore, studies examining people's lay theories of humanness show that people define hu-manness in terms of emotions that implicate higher order mental process such as self-awareness and memory (e.g., humiliation, nostalgia ; Leyens et al., 2000) and traits …