As a psychologist who studies culture and cognitionI am intrigued by the following observation: robots and IA Companions are much more popular in Japan and China than in the United States and Canada. Humanoid robots like Pepper already provide emotional care and support for the elderly in Japan. In China, an AI companion called Xiaoice More than half a billion recorded users, making it the most popular social chatbot in the world.(1)
How to explain this fascinating difference? Can the cultural background of a person shape their attitude towards human-type machines? If so, what characteristics of culture could be responsible?
Attitudes to social chatbots
In a study published last month in the Newspaper Intercultural psychologyThe social psychologist Dunigan Folk and his colleagues examined the cultural variation of attitudes towards social chatbots (Folk, Wu and Heine, 2025). They conducted two online experiences, which both recruited large samples. In the first experience, participants were 675 students from the University of British Columbia in Canada. In ethnic and cultural terms, 60% of students were in East Asia and 40% were European. In the second experience, participants were 984 adults in China, Japan and the United States.
The two experiments used the same conception and procedure essentially. The participants read and responded to a hypothetical scenario in which two people had a brief online conversation. The first person spoke of his new job and his family; The second person has constantly responded in an optimistic and affirmative way.
The study participants were accidentally assigned to read one of the two versions of the hypothetical conversation. In version A, the two individuals were humans. In version B, however, the first individual (that with new work) was a human, and the second individual was a catbot programmed in AI. Before and after reading the conversation, the participants answered a series of questions.
In both experiences, Eastern Asians have had more positive attitudes towards social chatbot than Europeans.(2) The two cultural groups preferred human human interaction in relation to human-chate interaction, but the Asians of the East did so by a much smaller margin than the Europeans. Eastern Asians were also more likely to believe that robots have a certain degree of consciousness and were more likely to anthropomorphiser in general. (Anthropomorphize is to attribute human characteristics and behaviors to animals, machines and inanimate objects.)
Animist and anthropomorphization minds
Why are East Asians more likely than anthropomorphiser Europeans – to see the robots and the companions of AI as human qualities? People and colleagues offer a surprising but convincing response. They note that traditional oriental religions such as shintoism and Buddhism have animist roots and do not make a strong distinction between humans and the natural world. Shintoism, for example, maintains that minds live in all forms of life and physical objects. Buddhism claims that “Buddhahah” can be obtained by anyone or anything – a person, a mountain or a river (Abe, 1997).
According to researchers, “the animist content of oriental religions can predispose people to see social chatbots as a part of the natural world than any other form of life. On the other hand, the inhabitants of Western countries and the United States can be more inclined to see chatbots as lifeless inanimate objects. As a result, Eastern Asians may be more likely than Westerners from anthropomorphizing technology. »»
Assuming that all this is correct, we must not be surprised to learn that the robots and companions of AI are more popular in China and Japan than in the United States and Canada. The cultural context of a person affects almost all aspects of their psychology, even what he thinks of new technologies based on AI.
(1) A social chatbot is an AI dialogue system that can commit empathetic Conversations with humans. Unlike Siri and Alexa, Microsoft Xiaoice establishes a long -term emotional connection with a human user.
(2) The biggest differences observed were between Chinese and European participants. Japanese participants generally obtained a score between the two other cultural groups.
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