Research · interpretation
Reading the human–AI literature
An annotated starting point for the research Regard leans on.
This note collects the literature families Regard’s case studies draw on. It is a starting point, not a survey, and it is written by a non-specialist reader. Each entry says briefly what the work does and — as important — what it does not settle.
Anthropomorphism
Epley, Waytz & Cacioppo (2007) propose that we attribute human characteristics to non-human agents more readily when human-like explanations are cognitively available, when we are motivated to predict an agent’s behaviour, and when we lack social connection. Useful for understanding why a fluent chatbot provokes social responses. It is a psychological theory of the human side; it says nothing about the machine’s inner status.
The media equation and “computers as social actors”
Reeves & Nass (1996) and Nass & Moon (2000) report that people apply politeness norms, reciprocity and personality judgements to computers showing minimal responsive behaviour — while denying that they think the computer is a person. The effect is fast and hard to suppress. Caveat: much of the original work predates conversational systems, and some findings have been revisited since.
Parasocial interaction
Horton & Wohl (1956) coined para-social interaction for the one-sided sense of a relationship that television viewers develop with performers. The concept transfers imperfectly to AI — a chatbot does respond to you — but the core idea, that a felt relationship can form without mutuality, is directly relevant.
Cognitive offloading and the extended mind
Clark & Chalmers (1998) argue that reliably available, trusted external resources can count as part of a cognitive system. Risko & Gilbert (2016) review the empirical literature on offloading memory and computation to the environment. Hollan, Hutchins & Kirsh (2000) frame cognition as distributed across people and artefacts. Together these describe how a person plus their notes, repositories and assistants can form one problem-solving unit. The extended-mind thesis specifically remains a contested philosophical position, not an established scientific result.
Automation bias
Skitka, Mosier & Burdick (1999) show experimentally that people using a decision aid can make errors of omission and commission by deferring to it — checking a plausible automated result less than they would check their own work. This is the failure mode that “trust but verify” is meant to prevent.
The oldest case
Weizenbaum (1966) documents users confiding in ELIZA, a simple pattern-matcher, and attributing understanding to it. The distance between a system’s mechanism and the response it provokes is not a new problem.
References
- Epley, N., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2007). On Seeing Human: A Three-Factor Theory of Anthropomorphism. Psychological Review 114(4), 864–886. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.864
- Reeves, B., & Nass, C. (1996). The Media Equation. Cambridge University Press / CSLI Publications.
- Nass, C., & Moon, Y. (2000). Machines and Mindlessness: Social Responses to Computers. Journal of Social Issues 56(1), 81–103. doi:10.1111/0022-4537.00153
- Horton, D., & Wohl, R. R. (1956). Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction. Psychiatry 19(3), 215–229. doi:10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049
- Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The Extended Mind. Analysis 58(1), 7–19. doi:10.1093/analys/58.1.7
- Risko, E. F., & Gilbert, S. J. (2016). Cognitive Offloading. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 20(9), 676–688. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2016.07.002
- Hollan, J., Hutchins, E., & Kirsh, D. (2000). Distributed Cognition: Toward a New Foundation for HCI Research. ACM Transactions on Computer–Human Interaction 7(2), 174–196. doi:10.1145/353485.353487
- Skitka, L. J., Mosier, K. L., & Burdick, M. (1999). Does Automation Bias Decision-Making?. International Journal of Human–Computer Studies 51(5), 991–1006. doi:10.1006/ijhc.1999.0252
- Weizenbaum, J. (1966). ELIZA. Communications of the ACM 9(1), 36–45. doi:10.1145/365153.365168
Citations were checked against the publisher of record. Where a claim is not backed by a reference it is marked in the text as interpretation or hypothesis.