How do we relate to computers? You would think its a silly question but a researcher is interested in just that. He wanted to know if a computer helped us complete a task would we be more likely to help the computer than they would a computer that hadn’t done anything for him. What he found was interesting. We are more likely to help the computer that didn’t help us. From NPR:
So they placed a series of people in a room with two computers. The people were told that the computer they were sitting at could answer any question they asked. In half of the experiments, the computer was incredibly helpful. Half the time, the computer did a terrible job.
After about 20 minutes of questioning, a screen appeared explaining that the computer was trying to improve its performance. The humans were then asked to do a very tedious task that involved matching colors for the computer. Now, sometimes the screen requesting help would appear on the computer the human had been using; sometimes the help request appeared on the screen of the computer across the aisle.
“Now, if these were people [and not computers],” Nass says, “we would expect that if I just helped you and then I asked you for help, you would feel obligated to help me a great deal. But if I just helped you and someone else asked you to help, you would feel less obligated to help them.”
What the study demonstrated was that people do in fact obey the rule of reciprocity when it comes to computers. When the first computer was helpful to people, they helped it way more on the boring task than the other computer in the room. They reciprocated.
“But when the computer didn’t help them, they actually did more color matching for the computer across the room than the computer they worked with, teaching the computer [they worked with] a lesson for not being helpful,” says Nass.
This is only the beginning of what he investigated. More here.
