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New study shows that humans perform better on tests when a robot standing nearby insults them
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2019-10-22 at 10:05 PM UTChttps://www.zerohedge.com/technology/new-study-shows-humans-think-more-efficiently-when-robot-stands-nearby-and-insults-them
A study performed by the American Association for the Advancement of science found that the presence of a "threatening humanoid robot" nearby can actually help improve human cognitive performance.
The study set out to learn more about how the presence of humanoid robots would affect human cognition. The study gave humans a simple test, called the Stroop task, in which they were told to identify the color of a word while ignoring the actual word itself. For instance, the test may present the word "BLUE", but in green text - in that case, the answer would be "green".
The study tested its hypothesis that the presence of robots may energize additional control from humans by having adults perform the Stroop task twice: once, alone and the other, in the presence of a humanoid robot that would offer either a positive (empathy) or negative (contempt, lack of empathy, negative evaluations about the participant's intelligence) response.
The robot was animated at a distance using two smartphones for the controls of its gestures and speech. At the end of the session that the robots participated in, participants rated them on personality traits and whether they were positive or negative.
The study found that "individuals’ attentional control improved notably in the presence of the bad robot." Stroop task performance improved exclusively in the presence of the negative robot, whereas it remained nearly the same in the presence of no one, or the positive robot.
I'd heard someone say this was the case before. That people could be more creative while being constantly insulted. Earlier today before reading this article, I thought to myself that having a lot of enemies could be highly motivating.
