Can Mind Perception Explain Virtuous Character Judgments of Artificial Intelligence?

Abstract

People tend to attribute less of a virtuous or unvirtuous characteristic to artificial intelligence (AI) agents compared to humans after observing a behavior exemplifying that particular virtue or vice. We argue that this difference can be explained by perceptions of experiential and agentic mind. Experiential mind focuses on one’s emotions, sensations, and past experiences, whereas agentic mind focuses on one’s intentions, capacity for action, and behaviors. Building on person-centered morality, virtue ethics, and mind perception research, we argue that both agentic and experiential mind are possible mediators of behavior-to-character attributions. We conducted two experiments ( n = 613, n = 584) using vignette scenarios in the virtue ethics domains of truth, justice, fear, wealth, and honor where we manipulated the actor to be an AI or human and the behavior to be virtuous or unvirtuous. As expected, we found that the character judgments of virtues and vices are weaker for AIs compared to humans. This character judgment difference is mediated by both experiential and agentic mind with a larger mediation effect for experiential mind compared to agentic mind. Exploratory analyses revealed differences in character and experiential mind based on the virtue domain.