Prosocial behavior towards machines

Building on the Computers Are Social Actors framework, we provide an overview of research demonstrating that humans behave prosocially towards machines. In doing so, we outline that similar motivational and cognitive processes play a role when people act in prosocial ways towards humans and machines. These include perceiving the machine as somewhat human, applying social categories to the machine, being socially influenced by the machine, and experiencing social emotions towards the machine. We conclude that studying prosocial behavior towards machines is important to facilitate proper functioning of human-machine interactions. We further argue that machines provide an interesting yet under-utilized resource in the study of prosocial behavior, because they are both highly controllable and humanlike.