For tens of thousands of years, the artifacts utilized by mankind were relatively simple, and our conceptions of them relatively stable. But we have reached a point in our technological history when our objects appear to think, display emotions, and are able to engage us in ways that only living beings once could.

The humanoid robot Robovie, which we use in our experiments, is programmed with advanced capabilities like greeting someone and shaking hands with them during an introduction, teaching them about the lab environment (e.g., discussing the history of Bonsai while showing someone our Bonsai tree), and even claiming responsibility for its actions.

In our last experiment, undergraduate participants individually engaged in a 15-minute interaction with Robovie. At the end of the interaction, the participant played a scavenger hunt game with Robovie, and needed to identify at least seven items in order to win a 20 dollar prize. Robovie served as score keeper, and although all participants won, Robovie nonetheless asserted that the participant did not find enough items to win. During the 15-minute interaction, more than 90 percent of participants responded using what we coded as “rich” language with Robovie, suggesting a commitment that Robovie could understand such textured language and engage in reasoned discussion. And in response to Robovie’s incorrect game ruling, 73 percent of the participants objected and followed up with arguments.

In a 50-minute interview, which immediately followed participants’ interactions with Robovie, 85 percent of participants reported that Robovie did not have free will. When asked whether Robovie was a living being, a technology, or something in between, half reported that Robovie was a technology, and the other half said Robovie was in between. Robovie was also granted some mental/emotional states (e.g., thinking, feeling) as well as sociality (e.g., could be a friend). On a moral accountability scale, 65 percent of participants attributed some level of moral accountability to Robovie for the mistake Robovie made.

There are entire classes of entities, like simple artifacts, that we do not argue with, or hold morally accountable for their actions. There are also groups, like children, that we do not hold accountable to the same extent that we would an adult. But the “partial morality” we would ascribe to a child—which is a living being, is capable of experiencing a range of mental-emotional states, and is social—is of a different form than the “partial morality” ascribed to Robovie in our most recent experiment.

Our research suggests that a new category of entities is emerging through the creation of personified technologies, to which we ascribe a unique constellation of attributes—including those that involve mental/emotional states, sociality, and in some ways even moral accountability—which does not mirror reasoning about humans, nonhuman animals, or simple artifacts. We are just beginning to address what—or who—we think we’re dealing with when we interact with this sophisticated class of entities.

Heather Gary is a doctoral student in developmental psychology at the University of Washington.

Mona Lisa is a portrait, whereas I used photo’s of real faces in my current study. I found that people prefer left-sided faces, but that doesn’t mean that artists paint these features in faces.

However, one clue that they do can be derived from similar studies that I’ve done using Rembrandt portraits (“Hemispheric Laterality Measured In Rembrandt’s Portraits Using Pupil Diameter and Aesthetic Verbal Judgments,”“Rembrandt’s Portraits: Approach or Avoid?” and “Hemispheric Asymmetries and Gender Influence Rembrandt’s Portrait Orientations”). Rembrandt mostly painted the left cheek of females and the right cheek of males, like many of his contemporaries. In my Rembrandt studies, I also found that individuals preferred the left cheek—especially of female portraits. Thus, we probably like Mona Lisa just the way she is.

Jim Schirillo is a professor of psychology at Wake Forest University.

The prevalence of children who are exposed to violent victimization is substantial and occurs to almost a quarter of children. We know that children who experience severe stress grow up have many health problems as adults. But we don’t know exactly how this might happen. Or what are the mechanisms.

In a recent study, we helped to address the question of how and when childhood stress gets
“under the skin” at the cellular level. To answer this question, we tested the effect of stress during childhood on telomeres, which are special elements at the tip of our chromosomes; much like the plastic tips of shoelaces, they prevent our DNA from unraveling. Telomeres get shorter each time cells divide, and we know today that telomeres may reflect our biological age. What we showed, for the first time, is that cumulative violence exposure was associated with accelerated telomere erosion, from age 5 to age 10, among children who experienced violence at a young age. Children who were exposed to multiple forms of violence had the fastest telomere erosion rate.

But what are the mechanisms linking childhood violence victimization to accelerated telomere erosion? At this point of time, we still don’t know the exact answer. Most of the insights about mechanisms linked with telomere erosion originate from research on oxidative stress (free radicals in our cells) and inflammation, indicating both as important influences on telomere length. We know that childhood stress predicts elevated inflammation, suggesting a possible cause for the increased telomere erosion observed in victims of violence. However, more studies are needed to test whether effects of stress on telomere erosion are mediated by oxidative stress, immune-system changes, or other factors in children who are exposed to violence.

Idan Shalev is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of psychology & neuroscience at Duke University.

I believe that any group activity that emphasizes self-other interaction can contribute to increasing social-emotional capacities, such as empathy, but that musical group interaction may be substantially more effective in doing so. This may be due to the many mental, social, and emotional skills specifically required for playing music together, and which appear to also be necessary for empathic behavior. It is almost as if the purpose of music making is to train us to become more empathic.

Consider, for example, what people playing in a group must do in order to maintain a coherent and harmonious musical flow. They need to continuously monitor and make sense of the movements, rhythms, intentions, and even the states of mind and the emotions transpiring in the other players, and adjust their playing accordingly. To achieve this, a lot of practice and experience are required. Mastering these abilities and being accustomed to attending others’ states of mind and emotions can considerably influence our attitude toward others, producing a more empathic vantage point. Obviously, however, like in any human interaction, we have to be careful of unfavorable pitfalls, such as intolerance, jealousy, and selfishness.

In sum, musical group interaction requires from its interacting individuals a unique combination of social and emotional capacities and skills that can potentially contribute to an enhanced capacity for empathy. In a recent study, we have put these ideas to the test, running a musical group interaction program during an entire school year. The program consisted of weekly one-hour sessions in small groups, during which the children performed various musical tasks designed to emphasize those elements in musical group interaction that are most likely to promote empathy. We found increases in the levels of empathy in the participating children that were much larger than in children participating in a parallel non-musical program or children not partaking in any additional activity.

Tal-Chen Rabinowitch is a doctoral student at the Centre for Music and Science at the University of Cambridge.