Humans Show Empathy for Human-Shaped Robot Hands

People se faces in clouds. So it would be likely that we show empathy for something that reminds us of a living thing.

I am always reminded that children put a lot of emotion into their teddy bears and power rangers. When we grow older we kind of loos that naivety because we know rationally that a teddy bear is not a living thing. But it's only skin deep and you put us in unfamiliar territory and we start attaching intent and emotion to seemingly alive things.

It's not that robot hands need to be specifically real it's just that we are naturally wired to have empathy for "life".

This is a vice article so I can forgive it's superficial interpretation of empathy. However it's important to realize that empathy is not just about feeling others pain but about feeling their anger, joy and jealousy.

Somehow along the way empathy became synonymous with people who care about other people and can feel their pain. But its so much more.

The show Community has a good bit about this when a character names a pencil then breaks it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z906aLyP5fg

Humans show empathy for all kinds of things: animate, inanimate, and even purely imaginary.