#HumanCenteredDesign

A multi-experiment psychology study finds that interacting with autonomous agents that display socio-emotional skills can make people judge those machines as more humanlike — and, worryingly, judge other humans as less human and more acceptable to mistreat. The research, published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology and available via the London School of Economics repository, uses five controlled experiments to show a chain from perceiving emotional ability in AI to lower “humanness” ratings of people, and finally to real choices that disadvantage human workers (e.g., preferring a company linked with poor working conditions or withholding a small donation to support staff) (PsyPost coverage; study PDF; journal record).