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On Further Reflection... Moral Reflections Enhance Robotic Moral Persuasive Capability

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Persuasive Technology (PERSUASIVE 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13832))

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Abstract

To enable robots to exert positive moral influence, we need to understand the impacts of robots’ moral communications, the ways robots can phrase their moral language to be most clear and persuasive, and the ways that these factors interact. Previous work has suggested, for example, that for certain types of robot moral interventions to be successful (i.e., moral interventions grounded in particular ethical frameworks), those interventions may need to be followed by opportunities for moral reflection, during which humans can critically engage with not only the contents of the robot’s moral language, but also with the way that moral language connects with their social-relational ontology and broader moral ecosystem. We conceptually replicate this prior work (N = 119) using a design that more precisely manipulates moral reflection. Our results confirm that opportunities for moral reflection are indeed critical to the success of robotic moral interventions—regardless of the ethical framework in which those interventions are grounded.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by NSF grant IIS-1909847 and in part by Air Force Office of Scientific Research Grant 16RT0881f.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, USA

    Ruchen Wen & Tom Williams

  2. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Boyoung Kim & Elizabeth Phillips

  3. Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    Qin Zhu

Authors
  1. Ruchen Wen
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  2. Boyoung Kim
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  3. Elizabeth Phillips
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  4. Qin Zhu
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  5. Tom Williams
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ruchen Wen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

    Alexander Meschtscherjakov

  2. Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Cees Midden

  3. Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Jaap Ham

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Wen, R., Kim, B., Phillips, E., Zhu, Q., Williams, T. (2023). On Further Reflection... Moral Reflections Enhance Robotic Moral Persuasive Capability. In: Meschtscherjakov, A., Midden, C., Ham, J. (eds) Persuasive Technology. PERSUASIVE 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13832. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30933-5_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30933-5_19

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-30933-5

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