The controversy over behavioral economics

The idea that robots can influence people to do good is based on a set of ideas that are have been criticized as exaggerated or even "dead"

It’s a commonplace in Human-Robot Interaction research that human beings respond to robots as if the machines were human — or at least, human-like. That’s why people name their robots, dress them up, mourn their “deaths” and try to avoid hurting their feelings.

At least, they do so when it’s convenient. I thin it’s a different question whether people will sacrifice anything important to their feelings of empathy for a robot. (In this study from last spring, for example, people were willing to make a bit of effort to avoid creating work for another human, but they weren’t willing to pay empathy’s price for a robot. They were more reluctant to litter after they’d watched a human picking up other people’s trash, but not after they’d seen a robot do so.)

Still, people do seem to interpret robots as social beings, so it’s reasonable to think that robots could exert social pressure, or at least social influence, on humans. A “nudge,” as defined by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler in their b…