Mind: We Relate to Our Computers as We Do to Humans

Sociologist Clifford Nass, who's just published the book “The Man Who Lied to his Laptop“, says we're treating our machines as if they were human.

Participants in one experiment interacted with a program that said something like “Most PCs these days have at 2MB of memory. Being an older model I only have 1MB. What do you feel inadequate about?” Participants were much more likely to reveal personal information in this case then when the program simply stated the specs of the machine.

The same was true when a search program was configured to be “helpful” or “unhelpful” in some search tasks participants performed. When people were then asked to help optimize the screen resolution on a computer where the program had been “helpful”, they were much more likely to do so than with the less helpful version

For more, see New Book Says We Relate to Our Computers like Humans by Ciara Byrne, September 6, 2010, at VentureBeat.