A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Attitudes Toward Robots among a Japanese and U.S. University Faculty using Implicit and Explicit Measures

Abstract

Japan has more robots than any other country, and robots play a role in many areas of Japanese society, including manufacturing, healthcare, and entertainment. However, there have been relatively few cross-cultural studies to examine Japan's robot-oriented culture, and the studies there have been tend to su er from a self- selection bias by sampling among participants who are visiting robotics exhibits or robot-related news groups. In addition, no studies have considered implicit measures of attitudes toward robots, which are indicative of uncontrolled cognitive processes, thus reducing self-presentational bias. This study presents a cross-cultural comparison of attitudes toward robots at a US and Japanese faculty using explicit and implicit measures. The results of this study indicate Japanese faculty had many more robot-related experiences than the US faculty. Although US participants reported a slightly stronger preference for peo- ple than the Japanese participants did, and Japanese participants reported slightly warmer feelings toward robots, implicit measures showed virtually no di erence be- tween the groups. Both groups had signi cantly more pleasant associations with humans than with robots. Both the Japanese and US faculty reported people as be- ing more dangerous than robots but implicitly associated robots more strongly with weapons than people. This gap was bigger for the US faculty. It may indicate a con ict between rational fears of people and unconscious fears of robots. Given the higher prevalence of violent crime in the US, people are a known danger, but the danger of robots is harder to assess owing to a lack of experience with them.