Laakasuo, M., Palomäki, J., Kunnari, A. et al. (9 more authors) (2023) Moral psychology of nursing robots: Exploring the role of robots in dilemmas of patient autonomy. European Journal of Social Psychology, 53 (1). pp. 108-128. ISSN 0046-2772
Abstract
Artificial intelligences (AIs) are widely used in tasks ranging from transportation to healthcare and military, but it is not yet known how people prefer them to act in ethically difficult situations. In five studies (an anthropological field study, n = 30, and four experiments, total n = 2150), we presented people with vignettes where a human or an advanced robot nurse is ordered by a doctor to forcefully medicate an unwilling patient. Participants were more accepting of a human nurse's than a robot nurse's forceful medication of the patient, and more accepting of (human or robot) nurses who respected patient autonomy rather than those that followed the orders to forcefully medicate (Study 2). The findings were robust against the perceived competence of the robot (Study 3), moral luck (whether the patient lived or died afterwards; Study 4), and command chain effects (Study 5; fully automated supervision or not). Thus, people prefer robots capable of disobeying orders in favour of abstract moral principles like valuing personal autonomy. Our studies fit in a new era in research, where moral psychological phenomena no longer reflect only interactions between people, but between people and autonomous AIs.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0). |
Keywords: | moral psychology of robotics, personal autonomy, nursing robots, moral judgments, human-robot interaction |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Psychology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 30 Jan 2025 13:53 |
Last Modified: | 30 Jan 2025 13:53 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/ejsp.2890 |
Sustainable Development Goals: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:222606 |