The appearance, speech, and motion of synthetic humans influences our empathy toward them

Abstract

Humanoid robots and computer-generated humans can elicit responses that people usually direct toward each other. As a result these humanlike entities may stand in for human actors during experiment-driven research in the social and psychological sciences as well as in some branches of neuroscience. Such research concerns factors like facial appearance, physical embodiment, speech quality, fluidity of motion, and contingent interactivity. A goal of this research is to understand why some humanlike entities are more successful than others at eliciting people’s empathy. Pursuing this goal informs new principles for creating synthetic humans that seem more believable in narratives and narrative-based interventions.