gender

WTF Fun Fact 13595 – Gender in Human-Robot Interaction

In the world of hospitality, there’s a growing preference when it comes to gender in human-robot interaction.

When guests interact with robots at hotels, they tend to feel more at ease with female robots. This trend is stronger when these robots possess human-like features, reveals a study from Washington State University.

Gender Stereotypes Extend to Robots

Soobin Seo, the mind behind the research and an assistant professor at WSU’s Carson Business College, sheds light on the reasons for this phenomenon. “People generally find solace when cared for by females, a result of prevalent gender stereotypes associated with service roles,” she explains. “This stereotype doesn’t stop at human interactions; it extends to hotel robot interactions too. And when these robots resemble humans closely, the preference is even more evident.”

Before the onset of the global pandemic, the hotel industry grappled with keeping its staff. Some hoteliers found a solution in automation and robots, employing them in various roles. They’re not just tucked away in the back, handling chores like dishwashing or cleaning. Robots today, in some establishments, welcome guests or even handle their luggage.

The upscale Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Las Vegas, for instance, employs female humanized robots named “Pepper.” On the other side of the spectrum, China’s fully automated FlyZoo hotel chain offers an exclusive robot and AI-powered experience to its guests.

Study Highlights Distinct Preferences for Human-Robot Interaction

To delve deeper into this preference, participants in Seo’s study visualized interactions with AI service robots during their hotel stay. Four distinct scenarios were crafted for this experiment:

  1. A male service robot, “Alex,” equipped with a face and a body resembling a human.
  2. “Sara,” a robot identical to Alex but female.
  3. Two other robot descriptions, gendered differently but portrayed as more mechanical with interactive screens replacing faces.

Feedback from participants was quite revealing. Those who imagined interactions with female robots, especially the human-like ones, found their experience more pleasant. In contrast, the male robot scenarios didn’t evoke a similarly positive response.

Future Considerations in AI and Hospitality

But it’s not just about gender preferences. The implications of substituting human hotel staff with AI robots span broader issues. Seo highlights a crucial consideration: “When a robot errs or malfunctions, like misplacing luggage or botching a reservation, guests will likely seek human intervention.”

Moreover, Seo and her team at WSU are currently probing another dimension: the robot’s personality. Do guests prefer robots that are chatty and outgoing, or those that are more reserved?

For AI robot developers and hotel employers, these findings are invaluable. Seo predicts an uptick in robot usage in hotels and restaurants, emphasizing the importance of understanding psychological dynamics in such interactions. “The intricacies we see in human-to-human interactions might very well shape the future of human-to-robot interactions,” she concludes.

— WTF fun facts

Source: “People prefer interacting with female robots in hotels, study finds” — ScienceDaily

WTF Fun Fact 12739 – The Dreams of Men

Multiple studies have shown tend to have more male characters in their dreams.

We have very little control over what we dream about, even though many of us try to direct our dreams. (I know I do – if I could spend all night dreaming about being a wealthy villa owner on an abandoned tropical coast instead of reliving a made-up scenario about missing a vital exam and never graduating high school, I would!)

Studying dreams

Anyway, there are hundreds of studies on dreams. Most of them involve having people use dream journals where they write down the contents of their dreams any time they awaken. The journals are then processed by a researchers who looks for certain characteristics without knowing anything about the person the journals belong to (that’s why they’re called a “blind judge” in many research papers).

Researchers usually start with common themes and types of characters and count mentions of them. And a lot of the research has backed up the data we’ve collected over time. (However, there are some differences between cultures as to what we dream about.)

Demhoff’s dream research

For example, G. William Domhoff wrote one of the most widely-cited papers on the genders we dream about (nearly two decades ago, before talking about more than two genders was a cultural priority). It’s called “The Dreams of Men and Women: Patterns of Gender Similarity and Difference,” and it was published in 2005.

In the paper, Domhoff is very clear that “The study of gender similarities and differences in dream content has proven to be a dangerous mine field for dream researchers.” That’s because this kind of information has the “potential to stir up all the tensions that inevitably accompany any discussion of gender in a world where gender discrimination–and conflicts between men and women on many personal issues–are pervasive.”

Limited interpretations

In other words, it’s likely that a large number of people will dislike this “fun fact” because they somehow feel judged by it or don’t like whatever they think it implies (which is largely nothing).

Demhoff was also careful to not that variations across cultures and across genders make generalizations difficult. He’s just reporting on one characteristic that he found to be statistically significant – the gender of the characters in people’s dreams.

Demhoff concentrated on American subjects since he was most familiar with the cultural characteristics of Americans. But other researchers have studied other cultures and found some key differences.

To make sure everyone is categorizing things in a roughly similar way, Demhoff used a coding system developed in 1966 called the Hall/Van de Castle system, where most things fall into pretty simple categories like: men/women; indoor setting/outdoor setting, etc. But that system was created based on the dream journals of white, middle-class college students at Case Western in the 1950s and 60s. In general, other studies have found these categories useful too.

So, on to the results (because results don’t mean much without some context first!).

What men dream of

Demhoff asked what percentage of dreams had a negative element “such as aggressions, misfortunes, failures, and negative emotions (anger, apprehension, confusion, and sadness)…” And the results were that “men and women are similar in that 80% of men’s dreams and 77% of women’s have at least one of these negative elements.”

When it comes to positive aspects, “such as friendly interactions, good fortune, success, and happiness, 53% of dreams for both men and women have at least one of those elements. Men and women also have an equal number of dreams in which food or eating is mentioned–about 17%.”

In addition, “Both men and women are more often victims than aggressors in the aggressive interactions in their dreams, and they face the same attackers, namely, men who are not known to them (“male strangers”) and animals. On a more positive note, both men and women are equally likely to befriend another character in their dreams.”

But we started with the most reported-on finding, which is that “men dream twice as often about other men as they do about women (67% vs. 33%), and women dream equally about both sexes (48% men, 52% women).”

What’s implied by the dreams of men? Not much

And here’s where people get offended. No one is implying that men fantasize about other men. They can be someone you fight on the street, your 5th grade math teacher, your dad…whatever.

Women may also have more of a character gender balance because their dreams tend to have more characters overall. This may be a result of women’s dreams being longer overall than men’s.

But Demhoff points out that this in not universal. Even among Black Americans, men and women tended to have an equal gender breakdown in dreams. Studies of Mexican and Peruvian teens as well as German college students also showed more of a gender balance. However, in each case there were slightly more men than women in everyone’s dreams.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “The Dreams of Men and Women: Patterns of Gender Similarity and Difference” — G. William Domhoff

WTF Fun Fact 12559 – The Roman Gladiatrix

The Romans were entertained by some pretty gruesome violence. And while gladiatorial combat didn’t originate in ancient Rome, that’s where we think of most of it taking place.

Gladiators were either born poor or were being punished for something. The most famous gladiator, Spartacus, had served as a soldier until a mistake got him imprisoned and enslaved and sent to train as a gladiator (prisoners had no choice – they could either train or be easily killed in the arena).

But if everything you know about gladiators comes from Spartacus or Russell Crowe’s turn in the arena, then you might be surprised to learn that every now and then, Romans could catch a glimpse of women in the arena fighting for their lives.

Referred to as gladiatracies (or Amazons, colloquially), they found topless, and there was an erotic element to their skillset. They weren’t pitted against men but other women or, occasionally, dwarves. It all depended on the predilections of that particular emperor at the time.

In fact, the memorably unstable emperor Nero put Ethiopian men, women, AND children in the arena together, presumably to shock and (for some) delight.

There were female gladiators in ancient Rome. They were rare, but we know gladiatrices existed partly because they were viewed as symptoms of a corrupt society and officially banned in 200 AD.

After all the scandal of seeing women this way, Septimius Severus (the emperor after the also-unstable gladiator-loving Commodus) decided that people had seen enough debauchery from women in the arena and banned female gladiators in 200 AD. –  WTF fun fact

Source: “Did female gladiators exist?” – BBC Culture