Children attribute moral standing to a personified agent

This paper describes the results of a study conducted to answer two questions: (1) Do children generalize their understanding of distinctions between conventional and moral violations in human-human interactions to humanagent interactions? and (2) Does the agent's ability to make claims to its own moral standing influence children's judgments? A two condition, between- and within-subjects study was conducted in which 60 eight and nine year-old children interacted with a personified agent and observed a researcher interacting with the same agent. A semistructured interview was conducted to investigate the children's judgments and reasoning about the observed interactions as well as hypothetical human-human interactions. Results suggest that children do distinguish between conventional and moral violations in human-agent interactions and that the ability of the agent to express harm and make claims to its own rights significantly increases children's likelihood of id...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Nathan G. Freier
• Keywords: CHI 2008, Human Computer Interaction, Hypothetical Human-human Interactions, Moral Violations, Personified Agent