Mind perception is a fundamental part of anthropomorphism and has recently been suggested to be a dual process. The current research studied the influence of implicit and explicit mind perception on a robot’s right to be protected from abuse, both in terms of participants condemning abuse that befell the robot as well as in terms of participants’ tendency to humiliate the robot themselves. Results indicated that acceptability of robot abuse can be manipulated through explicit mind perception, yet are inconclusive about the influence of implicit mind perception. Interestingly, explicit attribution of mind to the robot did not make people less likely to mistreat the robot. This suggests that the relationship between a robot’s perceived mind and right to protection is far from straightforward, and has implications for researchers and engineers who want to tackle the issue of robot abuse.

心智感知是拟人论的基本组成部分，最近被认为是一个双重过程。当前的研究研究了内隐和外显的心理感知对机器人免受虐待的权利的影响，包括参与者谴责机器人遭受的虐待以及参与者羞辱机器人的倾向。结果表明，机器人虐待的可接受性可以通过外显心理​​感知来操纵，但对内隐心理感知的影响尚无定论。有趣的是，将心智明确归因于机器人并没有降低人们虐待机器人的可能性。这表明机器人的感知思维与保护权之间的关系远非直接的，