Robots to the Rescue Researchers are exploring ways to make
rescue robots less "creepy" and more user-friendly,
incorporating lessons learned from studies of how humans
interact with technology March 11, 2011 Everyone knows machines
don't have feelings. But try telling that to your brain. "We
have one social brain, and it's the same whether we're dealing
with a person or a machine," said Clifford I. Nass, the Thomas
M. Storke Professor at Stanford University, who studies the
social aspects of technology. "People use the same social graces
with machines, especially computers, as they do with people."
Nass has devoted much of his research career to studying the
ways in which humans respond socially to technology. Despite
what most people know intellectually, they still often
automatically treat computers and other devices like human
beings, he said. In a 1993 study, for example, he found that
people unconsciously use social rules when interacting with
computers. His subjects were much "nicer" to the computer th