As rapid advances in robotics transform the modern workplace, a new psychological phenomenon is emerging: people who feel threatened by machines tend to favor strict social hierarchies as a way to regain a sense of control. Recent papers published in European Journal of Social Psychology provide evidence that exposure to highly capable robots reduces individuals’ sense of personal mastery, which in turn increases their desire for well-defined social rankings.
Incorporating robots and artificial intelligence into everyday life brings both technological benefits and psychological challenges. Scientists say this transition poses a unique kind of threat to humanity on a number of fronts.
“As robots become more involved in human society, people are concerned that their jobs will be replaced and are beginning to question the clarity of human identity,” said study author Feng Yu, a professor at the Department of Psychology at Wuhan University. “In other words, the rise of robots poses both real and identity-based threats, significantly disrupting the need for personal control.”
To understand how people cope with this anxiety, scientists have used the concept of compensatory control. This psychological framework suggests that when people feel like they have lost control of their lives, they look for external sources of structure to make the world feel predictable again.
“In response, we became interested in how humans compensate for this unique form of loss of control when faced with robotic threats,” Yu explained. “Based on compensatory control theory, we proposed that people tend to prefer hierarchical structures to restore a sense of control threatened by robot threat.”
Social hierarchies provide just this kind of psychological structure. A hierarchy is a system in which people or groups are ranked one above the other according to their status or authority. Strict hierarchies have clearly defined roles and power relationships, making human behavior highly predictable.
“Our perceptions of the robot threat may steer us toward favoring more hierarchical and unequal arrangements without us even realizing it,” Yu says. “This finding suggests that robotics may have an invisible force that reshapes social structures. However, this effect is not inevitable. Once social systems are perceived to be able to effectively manage robots, this negative compensatory effect weakens.”
To test these ideas, the researchers conducted three separate experiments. The first experiment involved 270 Chinese participants. The scientists wanted to see if reading about robot threats would reduce participants’ sense of personal control and subsequently increase their preference for hierarchy.
Participants were randomly divided into two groups. One group read a customized science news article titled “Robots: Will they replace human labor?” This article details how robots will replace humans’ jobs. The second group read another article titled “Robots: Just a fad?” This minimized the possibility of turnover.
After reading the article, participants completed a series of survey items to measure their perceptions of robot threat. They also completed a 12-item questionnaire designed to assess their sense of personal control. Finally, they completed a six-item scale assessing their preference for strict social hierarchies.
The results of the first experiment were consistent with initial predictions. Participants who read threatening articles reported significantly lower feelings of personal control than participants who read negative articles. This decreased sense of mastery was directly related to a strong preference for hierarchical structure.
The second experiment aimed to find stronger evidence that loss of personal control is the real cause of this hierarchy orientation. The sample consisted of 400 Chinese participants. The researchers used a research design that simultaneously manipulated both the robot’s threat perception and participants’ feelings of personal control.
Participants reread one of the two news articles from the first study that elicited either a high or low sense of robot threat. I then completed a specific writing task. Half of the participants were asked to write about a personal memory in which they felt they had a high degree of control over a situation, and the other half wrote about a neutral day-to-day life.
After the writing exercise, participants reported their preferences for social hierarchy. The researchers took into account various personality traits, such as tolerance and agreeableness, to ensure the measurements were accurate. The researchers found that when participants were induced to feel a strong sense of control through a writing task, the threat of robots no longer increased their desire for strict rankings.
The willingness to support a hierarchical system emerges only when a person’s sense of control is not managed in a neutral writing condition. This interaction provides evidence that personal control acts as a psychological bridge between technological threat and preference for inequality.
The third experiment investigated whether perceptions of social order act as a buffer against these technological anxieties. Researchers recruited 458 Chinese participants at this stage. Instead of reading news articles, participants watched selected online videos to manipulate their perceptions of the robot.
Participants watched videos of sophisticated robots successfully performing complex tasks such as moving boxes, opening and closing doors, and talking under conditions of high threat. The video showed the robot struggling to complete these same basic tasks under low threat conditions. This visual method allowed the researchers to see whether simply observing the robot’s features evoked the same psychological response as reading about the robot’s features.
Next, the researchers manipulated participants’ perceptions of social order by having them read fabricated essays. One essay described a highly ordered world with strong laws and regulations fully equipped to deal with the ethical challenges associated with artificial intelligence. In the second essay, I described a world that is chaotic and unprepared, lacking a proper legal framework.
After these tasks, participants re-rated their preferences for workplace hierarchy. The data showed that the order of the social system completely changed the participants’ responses. Observing a highly competent robot in a chaotic social situation significantly increased participants’ preference for hierarchy.
However, in ordered social conditions, robot threat had no significant effect on the desire for strict social ranking.
“Study 3 found that once a social system is perceived as orderly, the effect of perceived robot threat on hierarchical preferences is no longer significant,” Yu said. “This result suggests that establishing a stable and reliable system of robot governance is an important step to avoid the negative psychological effects of robot development. Only by anchoring the technology within an ethical and regulatory framework can we ensure its healthy and beneficial development.”
Although these findings provide new insights into human psychology, there are some limitations that should be considered. Although the experiment focused specifically on physical robots, participants may have fused this concept in their heads with a wide range of artificial intelligence algorithms.
“There are two important limitations worth noting,” Yu explained. “First, our study may have mistakenly confused robots and artificial intelligence. Robots and AI can both pose similar real-world, identity-based threats, but they also have different focuses.”
Future research should investigate whether fear of computer programs taking over cognitive tasks creates the same desire for hierarchy as physical robots taking over manual labor. Furthermore, the researchers note that their data was obtained exclusively from eastern populations.
“Second, there are limits to cultural sensitivity,” Yu said. “All of our participants were from China, a culture that strongly emphasizes power distance and accepts unequal hierarchies relatively well. Therefore, it remains to be seen whether the above effects take different forms in Western societies that emphasize egalitarianism.”
Because cultural background influences how people view social rankings, future research should also include Western participants to determine whether this tendency is a universal human trait. Another area of future exploration includes how social class and wealth influence how people cope with the increasing presence of advanced machines. The research team plans to continue investigating these topics.
“Our lab has long focused on the moral psychology of artificial intelligence,” Yu said. “We believe that in the age of intelligence, research should pay special attention to two meta-questions: how people perceive artificial intelligence and how artificial intelligence affects people.”
“This study is one of our explorations into the latter question,” Yu continued. “In the future, our laboratory will deepen our research in this area and further investigate the psychological and behavioral adaptations that accompany intellectual transformation of society.”
Understanding these psychological adaptations is critical as technology continues to transform the workplace and society as a whole. The psychological need for order is likely to influence how organizations integrate automated systems in the coming years.
“I would like to emphasize that social psychology plays an essential role in today’s era of rapid technological progress,” Yu said. “As society becomes increasingly intelligent, we need to pay more attention to the adaptive psychological dynamics that arise from this process, including not only direct reactions to AI but also indirect compensatory strategies.”
The study, “Perceived Robot Threat Strengthens Preference for Hierarchy,” was authored by Liying Xu, Yijun Zhao, Xiaofan Zhou, Fu Bai, and Feng Yu.
