The boundary of racial prejudice: Comparing preferences for computer-synthesized White, Black, and robot characters

Humanoid social robots are predicted to interact with humans in various domains of social life as robot technology keeps advancing. One area for understanding the impact of robots on human society is interracial relations. Would robots constitute a nonhuman outgroup to trigger human ingroup favoritism which will confine the boundary of racial prejudice? A study (N = 105) assessed Whites’ rank-ordered preferences for 15 White, Black and robot computer-synthesized characters. Explicit racial prejudice positively predicted White versus Black character preferences for liking and as one’s avatar, virtual friend, and virtual tutor. The implicit racial prejudice, measured with the Implicit Association Test (IAT), provided additional predictive utility for virtual friend. Among the 64 participants who reported minimal interest in robots, explicit racial prejudice negatively predicted preferences for Black over robot characters, showing a pattern that individuals with high prejudice preferred robot characters over Black ones. The results suggest alarming strength of racial prejudice and cast doubt on the notion of all-human ingroup favoritism in comparison to robots.