CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 18 (UPI) -- A Massachusetts study says people are more generous when they feel like they are being watched, even when the watcher is a robot computer image.
Two Harvard researchers set up a game designed to test volunteers' altruism. The subjects contributed money to a communal pot and could get more if they gave more -- but only if everyone else also gave more.
The research subjects sat at computer screens, half of them displaying an apparently unrelated robot named Kismet.
Terry Burnham and Brian Hare found those watched by Kismet were 30 percent more generous than the others.
Burnham said even though the volunteers were told they would remain completely anonymous, those with the bug-eyed Kismet looking at them felt they were being watched.
"It looks like the people in the experiments are trying to be nice, but the niceness is a mirage," Burnham said.
A report on the research was published in the current issue of New Scientist.
