关键词: 职场物化, 感知机器人威胁, 现实威胁, 认同威胁, 补偿控制理论

Abstract:

With buzzwords such as “tool man”, “laborer” and “corporate slave” sweeping the workplace, workplace objectification has become an urgent topic to be discussed. With the increasing use of artificial intelligence, especially robots in the workplace, the workplace effects produced by robots are also worth paying attention to. Therefore, the present paper aims to explore whether people’s perception of robots’ threat to them will produce or aggravate workplace objectification. On the basis of reviewing the related research on workplace objectification and robot workforce, and combined with intergroup threat theory, this paper elaborates the realistic threat to human employment and security caused by robot workforce, as well as the identity threat to human identity and uniqueness. From the perspective of compensatory control theory, this paper proposes the deep mechanisms and boundary conditions of that perceiving robot threat will reduce people's sense of control, thereby stimulating the control compensation mechanism, which in turn leads to workplace objectification.

This research is composed of eight studies. The first study includes two sub-studies, which investigate the relationship between perceived robot threat and workplace objectification through questionnaires and online experiments. This study tries to find a positive correlation and a causal association between perceived robot threat and workplace objectification. The second study includes three sub-studies, which explore why perceived robot threat increases workplace objectification. This study tries to verify the mediating effect of control compensation (sense of control), to explain the psychological mechanism behind the effect of perceived robot threat on workplace objectification, and to repeatedly verify it through different research methods. The third study includes three sub-studies. Based on the three compensatory control strategies proposed by the control compensation theory in addition to affirming nonspecific structure, this study tries to further explore the moderating effect of personal agency, external agency, and specific structure.

The main findings of this paper are as follows. First, perceived robot threat will increase workplace objectification, and perceived robot identity threat has a stronger effect. Second, the sense of control plays a mediating role in the effect of perceived robot threat (mainly identity threat) on workplace objectification. Specifically, the higher the perceived robot identity threat, the lower the sense of control, and the more serious the workplace objectification. Third, the other three strategies proposed by compensatory control theory, namely strengthening personal agency, supporting external agency and affirming specific structure, can moderate the effect of perceived robot threat on workplace objectification.

The main theoretical contributions of this paper are as follows. First, it reveals the negative influence of robots on interpersonal relationships and their psychological mechanism. Second, it extends the applicability of compensatory control theory to the field of artificial intelligence, proposing and verifying that perceived robot threat increases workplace objectification through compensatory control. Third, the relationship between different compensation control strategies is discussed, and the moderating model of perceived robot threat affecting workplace objectification is proposed and verified. The main practical contributions are: first, it provides insights into the anthropomorphic design of robots; second, it helps to better understand, anticipate and mitigate the negative social impact of robots.

Key words: workplace objectification, perceived robot threat, realistic threat, identity threat, compensatory control theory