Academic Journal

Mirroring a "Mechanical Mind": Robot Presence Promotes Utilitarian Motives in Distributive Justice Judgments.

Λεπτομέρειες βιβλιογραφικής εγγραφής
Τίτλος: Mirroring a "Mechanical Mind": Robot Presence Promotes Utilitarian Motives in Distributive Justice Judgments.
Συγγραφείς: Yin, Yunlu1 (AUTHOR), Shen, Zhengyu2 (AUTHOR) zhengyushen@ecust.edu.cn, Deng, Bingjie3 (AUTHOR), Xu, Qian1 (AUTHOR)
Πηγή: Journal of Business Ethics. May2026, Vol. 205 Issue 4, p845-862. 18p.
Θεματικοί όροι: Human-robot interaction, Distributive justice, Utilitarianism, Ethical decision making, Humanoid robots, Mentalization, Artificial intelligence & ethics
Περίληψη: As robots rapidly enter numerous social and organizational scenarios, it has become increasingly prevalent for people to make decisions in the presence of robots. Focusing on one fundamental issue in moral decision-making—distributive justice judgments—five studies, including an eye-tracking experiment and a field experiment, reveal that the presence of a humanoid robot increases humans' preference for efficiency over equity. We further demonstrate that the effect can be explained by humans' spontaneous mentalization of a humanoid robot's utilitarian perspective and is less pronounced among individuals with a lower tendency to adopt others' perspectives. Our findings suggest that robot presence may trigger and modulate human metacognition during human–robot interaction and may subtly nudge and shape human moral decisions in an AI‒human blended environment. As a result, managers and policymakers should be mindful of how humanoid robots may have unintended consequences on human morality, particularly in contexts related to general social welfare or legal implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Copyright of Journal of Business Ethics is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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  – Url: https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1007/s10551-025-06144-0
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  Data: Mirroring a "Mechanical Mind": Robot Presence Promotes Utilitarian Motives in Distributive Justice Judgments.
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="JN" term="%22Journal+of+Business+Ethics%22">Journal of Business Ethics</searchLink>. May2026, Vol. 205 Issue 4, p845-862. 18p.
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Human-robot+interaction%22">Human-robot interaction</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Distributive+justice%22">Distributive justice</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Utilitarianism%22">Utilitarianism</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Ethical+decision+making%22">Ethical decision making</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Humanoid+robots%22">Humanoid robots</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Mentalization%22">Mentalization</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Artificial+intelligence+%26+ethics%22">Artificial intelligence & ethics</searchLink>
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  Data: As robots rapidly enter numerous social and organizational scenarios, it has become increasingly prevalent for people to make decisions in the presence of robots. Focusing on one fundamental issue in moral decision-making—distributive justice judgments—five studies, including an eye-tracking experiment and a field experiment, reveal that the presence of a humanoid robot increases humans' preference for efficiency over equity. We further demonstrate that the effect can be explained by humans' spontaneous mentalization of a humanoid robot's utilitarian perspective and is less pronounced among individuals with a lower tendency to adopt others' perspectives. Our findings suggest that robot presence may trigger and modulate human metacognition during human–robot interaction and may subtly nudge and shape human moral decisions in an AI‒human blended environment. As a result, managers and policymakers should be mindful of how humanoid robots may have unintended consequences on human morality, particularly in contexts related to general social welfare or legal implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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  Data: <i>Copyright of Journal of Business Ethics is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.</i> (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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              Text: May2026
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