A study demonstrates that people who observe affectionate treatment of robots can feel for them much as they do for fellow humans:
Affectionate interaction towards both, the robot and the human, resulted in similar neural activation patterns in classic limbic structures, indicating that they elicit similar emotional reactions.
Daniel Akst notes that, “Perhaps reassuringly, though, brain scans of people shown videos of abusive behavior were more empathetic when the victim was a human being than when the sufferer was a robot.” Natt Garun adds that the study “explains why I cared so much about poor Wall-E when he was getting crushed in the Axiom, or the adoration I have for R2D2 and its smart, resourceful ways”:
What this all means is that robots, which often have the characteristics of a living being, have the tendency to tug at our heartstrings more than just any ol’ lifeless item. ”One goal of current robotics research is to develop robotic companions that establish a long-term relationship with a human user, because robot companions can be useful and beneficial tools,” said one of the team’s researchers Rosenthal-von der Pütten.
The Dish 