When less is more: Single selfhood-related cues elicit higher selfhood ratings than multiple cues

In everyday interaction, people show a consistent tendency to anthropomorphize or attribute aspects of selfhood to nonhuman agents. In previous studies, we found that people (over-)generalize from the presence of a single behavioral cue to selfhood (like the ability to learn or attention sharing) to the presence of other (absent) cues —suggesting that cueing a small aspect of selfhood is sufficient to trigger the entire selfhood concept with all its implications. Here, we tested the prediction that single selfhood cues are as efficient as multiple selfhood cues in eliciting selfhood attributions to an artificial agent. In three experiments, we compared selfhood ratings elicited by a robot exhibiting behavioral cues of efficiency, learning sensitivity, and equifinality with ratings for a robot exhibiting only one of these cues. Contrary to our expectation, participants did not show the same degree of selfhood attribution to both robots, but more selfhood-attributions towards the single-cue robot in Experiments 1 (single efficiency cue) and 3 (single equifinality cue), while in Experiment 2 (single learning cue), the multiple-cues robot received higher ratings on the manipulated characteristics as well as on context sensitivity (results for selfhood-attribution were negligible). In sum, we conclude that a single selfhood cue tends to elicit stronger selfhood-attributions overall than multiple cues.