Type of education affects individuals’ adoption of Intentional Stance towards robots: an EEG study

Research has shown that, under certain circumstances, people can adopt the Intentional Stance towards robots and thus treat them as intentional agents. One factor potentially affecting individuals’ adoption of the Intentional Stance is the type of education (and presumably their prior knowledge about robots). In the present study, we investigated whether participants’ type of (formal) education modulated their adoption of the Intentional Stance. We asked two samples of participants to complete the InStance Test, to measure the individual tendency to attribute mental states to robots. One sample comprised individuals with a background in robotics, while the other comprised individuals with a background in psychotherapy. Before the beginning of the task, we recorded participants’ neural activity during a resting state. At the behavioral level, results showed that therapists scored higher in the InStance Test than roboticists, i.e., their likelihood of adopting the Intentional Stance was higher. This result was mirrored by participants’ neural activity during resting state, as we found higher power in the gamma frequency range (associated with mentalizing and the adoption of Intentional Stance) for therapists compared to roboticists.Therefore, we conclude that the type of education that promotes mentalizing skills increases the likelihood of attributing intentionality to robots.