Are members of marginalized communities silenced on social media when they share personal experiences of racism? Here, we investigate the role of algorithms, humans, and platform guidelines in suppressing disclosures of racial discrimination. In a field study of actual posts from a neighborhood-based social media platform, we find that when users talk about their experiences as targets of racism, their posts are disproportionately flagged for removal as toxic by five widely used moderation algorithms from major online platforms, including the most recent large language models. We show that human users disproportionately flag these disclosures for removal as well. Next, in a follow-up experiment, we demonstrate that merely witnessing such suppression negatively influences how Black Americans view the community and their place in it. Finally, to address these challenges to equity and inclusion in online spaces, we introduce a mitigation strategy: a guideline-reframing intervention that is effective at reducing silencing behavior across the political spectrum.

In Human-Robot Interaction, researchers typically utilize in-person studies to collect subjective perceptions of a robot. In addition, videos of interactions and interactive simulations (where participants control an avatar that interacts with a robot in a virtual world) have been used to quickly collect human feedback at scale. How would human perceptions of robots compare between these methodologies? To investigate this question, we conducted a 2x2 between-subjects study (N=160), which evaluated the effect of the interaction environment (Real vs. Simulated environment) and participants’ interactivity during human-robot encounters (Interactive participation vs. Video observations) on perceptions about a robot (competence, discomfort, social presentation, and social information processing) for the task of navigating in concert with people. We also studied participants’ workload across the experimental conditions. Our results revealed a significant difference in the perceptions of the robot between the real environment and the simulated environment. Furthermore, our results showed differences in human perceptions when people watched a video of an encounter versus taking part in the encounter. Finally, we found that simulated interactions and videos of the simulated encounter resulted in a higher workload than real-world encounters and videos thereof. Our results suggest that findings from video and simulation methodologies may not always translate to real-world human-robot interactions. In order to allow practitioners to leverage learnings from this study and future researchers to expand our knowledge in this area, we provide guidelines for weighing the tradeoffs between different methodologies.

Today more than ever before, online text-based interactions have become a common means of communication between consumers and companies. But with the advent of AI-powered chatbots, customers sometimes struggle to ascertain the humanness of their online interaction partners (e.g., customer service agents). The current research investigates the humanizing potential of one common feature in text communication-typographical errors ("typos"). Across five experiments reported in the main text, two supplementary experiments, and pilot data (total N=3,399), participants perceived customer service agents who made and subsequently corrected a typo to be more human-and more helpful-than agents who made no typos or made but did not correct a typo. These findings provide novel insights into how conversational features influence customers' perceptions of online agents. In an era where AI frequently surpasses human performance in a variety of domains, consumers may perceive the act of making (and correcting) errors to be a hallmark of humanness.

Despite the clear benefits that social connection offers to well-being, strangers in close physical proximity regularly ignore each other due to their tendency to underestimate the positive consequences of social connection. In a between-subjects study (N = 49 pairs, 98 participants), we investigated the effectiveness of a humanoid robot, a computer screen, and a poster at stimulating meaningful, face-to-face conversations between two strangers by posing progressively deeper questions. We found that the humanoid robot facilitator was able to elicit the greatest compliance with the deep conversation questions. Additionally, participants in conversations facilitated by either the humanoid robot or the computer screen reported greater happiness and connection to their conversation partner than those in conversations facilitated by a poster. These results suggest that technology-enabled conversation facilitators can be useful in breaking the ice between strangers, ultimately helping them develop closer connections through face-to-face conversations and thereby enhance their overall well-being.

The authors at times propose that robots are mere depictions of social agents (a philosophical claim) and at other times that people conceive of social robots as depictions (an empirical psychological claim). We evaluate each claim's accuracy both now and in the future and, in doing so, we introduce two dangerous misperceptions people have, or will have, about social robots.

Despite having more opportunities than ever to connect with strangers, and much to gain from doing so, people often refrain from talking with, and listening to, strangers. We propose a framework that classifies obstacles to connecting with strangers into three categories concerning intention (underestimating the benefits of conversations), competence (misunderstanding how to appear likeable and competent in conversation), and opportunity (being constrained in access to a diverse set of strangers). To promote conversations among strangers, interventions have attempted to calibrate people's expectations, improve their communication, and create more opportunities for strangers to connect. We identify the need to better understand how miscalibrated beliefs emerge and are sustained, what contextual factors impact conversation likelihood, and how conversations evolve as relationships develop.

As robots rapidly enter society, how does human social cognition respond to their novel presence? Focusing on one foundational social-cognitive capacity-visual perspective taking-seven studies reveal that people spontaneously adopt a robot's unique perspective and do so with patterns of variation that mirror perspective taking toward humans. As they do with humans, people take a robot's visual perspective when it displays goal-directed actions. Moreover, perspective taking is absent when the agent lacks human appearance, increases when the agent looks highly humanlike, and persists even when the humanlike agent is perceived as eerie or as obviously lacking a mind. These results suggest that visual perspective taking toward robots is consistent with a "mere appearance hypothesis"-a form of stimulus generalization based on humanlike appearance-rather than following an "uncanny valley" pattern or arising from mind perception. Robots' superficial human resemblance may trigger and modulate social-cognitive responses in human observers originally developed for human interaction.

The intention of the current presenter symposium is to examine how dehumanization pervades organizational life and to explore the ways in which we can help to re-humanize modern workplaces through our scholarship. With this purpose, our symposium assembles four papers that introduce new ideas and investigate important questions related to (de)humanization at work. Demeaning Those We Help: The Neglect of Psychological Help Relative to Physical Help Presenter: Juliana Schroeder; U. of California, Berkeley Humanization and Anxiety in Performance Situations Presenter: Shane Schweitzer; NUS Business School Presenter: Adam Waytz; Northwestern Kellogg School of Management Human Encounter at Work Presenter: Eun Bit Hwang; U. of Michigan A Window into Coworkers’ Worlds: Examining the Impact of Incidental Learning Presenter: Ashley Elizabeth Hardin; Washington U. in St. Louis Presenter: Beth Schinoff; Boston College Presenter: Rachel McCullagh Balven; Arizona State U. Presenter: Kris Byron; Georgia State U.

A person's well-being depends heavily on forming and maintaining positive relationships, but people can be reluctant to connect in ways that would create or strengthen relationships. Emerging research suggests that miscalibrated social cognition may create psychological barriers to connecting with others more often. Specifically, people may underestimate how positively others will respond to their own sociality across a variety of social actions, including engaging in conversation, expressing appreciation, and performing acts of kindness. We suggest that these miscalibrated expectations are created and maintained by at least three mechanisms: differential construal, uncertain responsiveness, and asymmetric learning. Underestimating the positive consequences of social engagement could make people less social than would be optimal for both their own and others' well-being.

Performing acts of kindness increases well-being, yet people can be reluctant to ask for help that would enable others' kindness. We suggest that people may be overly reluctant because of miscalibrated expectations about others' prosocial motivation, underestimating how positively others will feel when asked for help. A pretest identified that interest in asking for help was correlated with expectations of how helpers would think and feel, but a series of scenarios, recalled experiences, and live interactions among adult participants in the United States (total N = 2,118) indicated that those needing help consistently underestimated others' willingness to help, underestimated how positively helpers would feel, and overestimated how inconvenienced helpers would feel. These miscalibrated expectations stemmed from underestimating helpers' prosocial motivation while overestimating compliance motivation. This research highlights a limitation of construing help-seeking through a lens of compliance by scholars and laypeople alike. Undervaluing prosociality could create a misplaced barrier to asking for help when needed.

Compliments can satisfy others' need to belong, but expressers may underestimate their positive impact on recipients, creating a barrier to giving them more often. We assess how people expect recipients will react to multiple compliments over time, compared to recipients' actual experiences. Participants expected that recipients would adopt to multiple compliments, with each feeling less positive and sincere (Experiment 1). An experiment found no evidence of adaptation in recipients' actual experience, while expressers underestimated recipients' positive reactions (Experiment 2). Participants expected less adaptation among recipients when they saw the actual compliments received, suggesting that mistaken adaptation beliefs stem from overestimating similarity between multiple compliments (Experiment 3). Underestimating compliments' consistently positive impact may restrain people from expressing them more routinely.

The existing studies have indicated that abusive supervision affects creativity; however, the specific impact mechanism is still unclear due to the uncertain relationship between leadership and employee creativity. Based on the resource perspective, this study examines the influence of abusive supervision on creativity through psychological availability (PA) and the moderating of this mediation by performance improvement attribution (PIA). Based on a survey of 234 employees', the hypotheses have been tested and the results reveal that abusive supervision had a detrimental effect on employee creativity partially mediated by employee PA, and employees' PIA moderated the mediation. This study offers new insights into the mechanisms associated with the relationship between abusive supervision and creativity.

Compliments increase the well-being of both expressers and recipients, yet people report in a series of surveys giving fewer compliments than they should give, or would like to give. Nine experiments suggest that a reluctance to express genuine compliments partly stems from underestimating the positive impact that compliments will have on recipients. Participants wrote genuine compliments and then predicted how happy and awkward those compliments would make recipients feel. Expressers consistently underestimated how positive recipients would feel but overestimated how awkward recipients would feel (Experiments 1-3, S4). These miscalibrated expectations are driven partly by perspective gaps in which expressers underestimate how competent—and to a lesser extent how warm—their compliments will be perceived by recipients (Experiments 1-3). Because people’s interest in expressing compliments is partly driven by their expectations of the recipient’s reaction, undervaluing compliments creates a barrier to expressing them (Supplemental Experiments S2, S3, S4). As a result, directing people to focus on the warmth conveyed by their compliments (Experiment 4) increased interest in expressing them. We believe these findings may reflect a more general tendency for people to underestimate the positive impact of prosocial actions on others, leading people to be less prosocial than would be optimal for both their own and others’ well-being.

People value those who act with others in mind even as they pursue their own goals. Across three studies (N=566; 4- to 6-year-olds), we investigated children’s developing understanding of such considerate, socially-mindful actions. By age 6, both U.S. and Chinese children positively evaluate a character who takes a snack for herself in a way that leaves snack choice for others over a character who leaves no choice (Study 1), but only when the actors had alternative possible actions (Study 2) and when a clear beneficiary was present (Study 3). These results suggest an emerging ability to infer underlying social intentions from self-oriented actions, providing insights into the role of social-cognitive capacities vs. culture-specific norms in children’s moral evaluations.

Compliments increase the well-being of both expressers and recipients, yet people report in a series of surveys giving fewer compliments than they should give, or would like to give. Nine experiments suggest that a reluctance to express genuine compliments partly stems from underestimating the positive impact that compliments will have on recipients. Participants wrote genuine compliments and then predicted how happy and awkward those compliments would make recipients feel. Expressers consistently underestimated how positive the recipients would feel but overestimated how awkward recipients would feel (Experiments 1-3, S4). These miscalibrated expectations are driven partly by perspective gaps in which expressers underestimate how competent—and to a lesser extent how warm—their compliments will be perceived by recipients (Experiments 1-3). Because people’s interest in expressing a compliment is partly driven by their expectations of the recipient’s reaction, undervaluing a compliment creates a barrier to expressing them (Supplemental Experiments S2, S3, S4). As a result, directing people to focus on the warmth conveyed by their compliment (Experiment 4) increased interest in expressing it. We believe these findings may reflect a more general tendency for people to underestimate the positive impact of prosocial actions on others, leading people to be less prosocial than would be optimal for both their own and others’ well-being.

People value those who act with others in mind even as they pursue their own goals. Across three studies ( N  = 566; 4- to 6-year-olds), we investigated children’s developing understanding of such considerate, socially-mindful actions. By age 6, both U.S. and Chinese children positively evaluate a character who takes a snack for herself in a way that leaves a snack choice for others over a character who leaves no choice (Study 1), but only when the actors had alternative possible actions (Study 2) and when a clear beneficiary was present (Study 3). These results suggest an emerging ability to infer underlying social intentions from self-oriented actions, providing insights into the role of social-cognitive capacities versus culture-specific norms in children’s moral evaluations.

We provide guidelines for planning, executing, analyzing, and reporting hypothesis-driven experiments in Human–Robot Interaction (HRI). The intended audience are researchers in the field of HRI who are not trained in empirical research but who are interested in conducting rigorous human-participant studies to support their research. Following the chronological order of research activities and grounded in updated research practices in psychological and behavioral sciences, this primer covers recommended methods and common pitfalls for defining research questions, identifying constructs and hypotheses, choosing appropriate study designs, operationalizing constructs as variables, planning and executing studies, sampling, choosing statistical tools for data analysis, and reporting results.

Humanization and dehumanization broadly refer to the attribution or denial of ‘humanness’ to others: traits that make up the ‘human essence’ or make humans unique from other animals. There has been a recent surge of psychological research demonstrating the importance of humanization and dehumanization across many phenomena. However, (de)humanization is typically entwined with a variety of related constructs (e.g., mind perception, objectification), leading to a lack of conceptual clarity. Additionally, despite the close attention paid to dehumanization and humanization in the psychological sciences, the extension of these concepts to organizational scholarship has been limited. Some of the questions we will discuss include: How should scholars define humanization and dehumanization, and how do we distinguish these constructs from mind perception, objectification, and anthropomorphism? Which organizational contexts/processes are most likely to motivate people to (de)humanize others, or even themselves? What are some barriers to the application of (de)humanization to organizational research?

As robots rapidly enter society, how does human social cognition respond to their novel presence? Focusing on one foundational social-cognitive capacity—visual perspective taking—seven studies reveal that people spontaneously adopt a robot’s unique perspective and do so with patterns of variation that mirror perspective taking toward humans. As they do with humans, people take a robot’s visual perspective when it displays goal-directed actions. Moreover, perspective taking is absent when the agent lacks human appearance, increases when it looks highly humanlike, and persists even when the humanlike agent is perceived as eerie or as obviously lacking a mind. These results suggest that visual perspective taking toward robots is consistent with a “mere appearance hypothesis”—a form of stimulus generalization based on humanlike appearance—rather than following an “uncanny valley” pattern or arising from mind perception. Robots’ superficial human resemblance may trigger and modulate social-cognitive responses in human observers originally developed for human interaction.

Robots are entering a wide range of society’s private and public settings, often with a strikingly humanlike appearance and emulating a humanlike mind. When do laypeople attribute a humanlike mind to these machines? In this paper, we reveal a systematic relationship between variations in robots’ humanlike appearance and the mental capacities people infer. In a programmatic, bottom-up investigation across 251 real-world robots, we first decompose humanlike appearance into three distinct appearance dimensions—body-manipulators, face, and surface. Then, we show that experimentally manipulating specific appearance constellations leads people to make specific inferences about a robot’s mental capacities. In particular, while the presence of body-manipulators shapes people’s inferences about a robot’s perception-action capacities, facial and surface appearance shapes people’s inferences about a robot’s affective and moral capacities. This research provides theoretical and methodological clarity on the powerful impact that a robot’s body has on human perceptions of its mind.