Described robot functionality impacts emotion experience attributions

This work tested whether attributions of emotional experience vary with the perceived functionality of robots. When robots were described in terms of their social value, participants assigned greater levels of emotional experience compared to when robots merely seemed to fulfil economic needs. However, increased perceptions of experience elicited more uncomfortable feelings in observers, apparently tapping into the uncanny valley. Implications for the use of social robots and human responses to feeling machines are discussed.