Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Psychological reactions to human versus robotic job replacement

Nature Human Behaviour volume 3, pages 1062–1069 (2019)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Advances in robotics and artificial intelligence are increasingly enabling organizations to replace humans with intelligent machines and algorithms1. Forecasts predict that, in the coming years, these new technologies will affect millions of workers in a wide range of occupations, replacing human workers in numerous tasks2,3, but potentially also in whole occupations1,4,5. Despite the intense debate about these developments in economics, sociology and other social sciences, research has not examined how people react to the technological replacement of human labour. We begin to address this gap by examining the psychology of technological replacement. Our investigation reveals that people tend to prefer workers to be replaced by other human workers (versus robots); however, paradoxically, this preference reverses when people consider the prospect of their own job loss. We further demonstrate that this preference reversal occurs because being replaced by machines, robots or software (versus other humans) is associated with reduced self-threat. In contrast, being replaced by robots is associated with a greater perceived threat to one’s economic future. These findings suggest that technological replacement of human labour has unique psychological consequences that should be taken into account by policy measures (for example, appropriately tailoring support programmes for the unemployed).

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Preferences for human and robotic replacement across studies 1a–c.
Fig. 2: Mediation diagram for study 5a (n = 85).

Data availability

Data from all of the studies reported in this paper are publicly available at https://osf.io/8nfc5/.

Code availability

Analyses were conducted with STATA 14.1 and with SPSS 23. No custom code was used. Code that supports the findings of this study is available from the corresponding author upon request.

References

  1. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Information Technology and the U.S. Workforce: Where Are We and Where Do We Go from Here? https://doi.org/10.17226/24649 (National Academies Press, 2017).

  2. Brynjolfsson, E., Mitchell, T. & Rock, D. What can machines learn, and what does it mean for occupations and the economy? AEA Pap. Proc. 108, 43–47 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Arntz, M., Gregory, T. & Zierahn, U. The Risk of Automation for Jobs in OECD Countries: A Comparative Analysis OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Paper No. 189 https://doi.org/10.1787/5jlz9h56dvq7-en (OECD Publishing, 2016).

  4. Brynjolfsson, E. & McAfee, A. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (WW Norton & Company, 2014).

  5. Nedelkoska, L. & Quintini, G. Automation, Skills Use and Training OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Paper No. 202 https://doi.org/10.1787/2e2f4eea-en (OECD Publishing, 2018).

  6. Special Eurobarometer 382: Public Attitudes Towards Robots https://data.europa.eu/euodp/data/dataset/S1044_77_1_EBS382 (European Commission, 2014).

  7. Batson, C. D. & Powell, A. A. in Handbook of Psychology: Personality and Social Psychology Vol. 5 463–484 (John Wiley & Sons, 2003).

  8. Festinger, L. A theory of social comparison processes. Hum. Relat. 7, 117–140 (1954).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Tesser, A. Toward a self-evaluation maintenance model of social behavior. Adv. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 21, 181–227 (1988).

    Google Scholar 

  10. Arnkelsson, G. B. & Smith, W. P. The impact of stable and unstable attributes on ability assessment in social comparison. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 26, 936–947 (2000).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Charles, K. K., Hurst, E. & Schwartz, M. The transformation of manufacturing and the decline in US employment. in NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2018 Vol. 33 (eds. Eichenbaum, M. & Parker, J. A.) 307–372 (University of Chicago Press, 2019).

  12. Waytz, A. & Norton, M. I. Botsourcing and outsourcing: robot, British, Chinese, and German workers are for thinking—not feeling—jobs. Emotion 14, 434–444 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. McKee-Ryan, F., Song, Z., Wanberg, C. R. & Kinicki, A. J. Psychological and physical well-being during unemployment: a meta-analytic study. J. Appl. Psychol. 90, 53–76 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Wanberg, C. R. The individual experience of unemployment. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 63, 369–396 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Wanberg, C., Basbug, G., Van Hooft, E. A. & Samtani, A. Navigating the black hole: explicating layers of job search context and adaptational responses. Pers. Psychol. 65, 887–926 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Hendra, R. et al. Encouraging Evidence on a Sector-Focused Advancement Strategy: Two-Year Impacts from the WorkAdvance Demonstration (MDRC, 2016).

  17. Wanberg, C. R., Kanfer, R., Hamann, D. J. & Zhang, Z. Age and reemployment success after job loss: an integrative model and meta-analysis. Psychol. Bull. 142, 400–426 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Van Ours, J. C. & Vodopivec, M. How shortening the potential duration of unemployment benefits affects the duration of unemployment: evidence from a natural experiment. J. Labor Econ. 24, 351–378 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Sharone, O. Flawed System/Flawed Self: Job Searching and Unemployment Experiences (Univ. Chicago Press, 2013).

  20. Mitchell, T. & Brynjolfsson, E. Track how technology is transforming work. Nature 544, 290–292 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Simonsohn, U. Small telescopes: detectability and the evaluation of replication results. Psychol. Sci. 26, 559–569 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Palan, S. & Schitter, C. Prolific.ac—a subject pool for online experiments. J. Behav. Exp. Finance 17, 22–27 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Darnon, C., Dompnier, B., Gilliéron, O. & Butera, F. The interplay of mastery and performance goals in social comparison: a multiple-goal perspective. J. Educ. Psychol. 102, 212–222 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Sharpe Wessling, K., Huber, J. & Netzer, O. MTurk character misrepresentation: assessment and solutions. J. Consum. Res. 44, 211–230 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Hayes, A. F. Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis: A Regression-Based Approach (Guilford Publications, 2017).

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. TUM School of Management, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    Armin Granulo & Christoph Fuchs

  2. Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

    Stefano Puntoni

Authors
  1. Armin Granulo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Christoph Fuchs
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Stefano Puntoni
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

A.G., C.F. and S.P. designed the studies. A.G. and C.F. carried out the experiments. A.G. analysed the data. A.G., C.F. and S.P. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Armin Granulo.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests

Additional information

Peer review information: Primary Handling Editor: Marike Schiffer.

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Results and Supplementary Tables 1–5.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Dataset 1a

Data for study 1a.

Supplementary Dataset 1b

Data for study 1b.

Supplementary Dataset 1c

Data for study 1c.

Supplementary Dataset 2

Data for study 2.

Supplementary Dataset 3a

Data for study 3a.

Supplementary Dataset 3b

Data for study 3b.

Supplementary Dataset 4

Data for study 4.

Supplementary Dataset 5a

Data for study 5a.

Supplementary Dataset 5b

Data for study 5b.

Supplementary Dataset 5c

Data for study 5c.

Supplementary Dataset 6

Data for study 6.

Supplementary Data 1

Data for additional study examining the relationship between robotic (versus human) replacement, future economic concerns and skill obsolescence.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Granulo, A., Fuchs, C. & Puntoni, S. Psychological reactions to human versus robotic job replacement. Nat Hum Behav 3, 1062–1069 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0670-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0670-y

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing