Ставлення до роботів і роботизованих протезів: проблеми сьогодення та конструювання майбутнього

The modern world is constantly changing, and the latest trends of Western psychologists are the development of such direction as robotic psychology which focuses on the study of humans and robotic creatures’ compatibility. Over the past decade, researchers have investigated various aspects of this interaction: from the general level of perception to the specific emotional and tactical levels. In Ukraine, robotic psychology only starts its formation and the main goal of our study was to gather information about the attitudes of Ukrainian youth to robots and people with robotic prosthetics or sensory amplifiers. This article is especially relevant because during the years of the military conflict in the East of Ukraine, the number of people with the trauma of the limbs and various sensory organs that needed robotic prosthetics or amplifiers is increased. In May-June 2018 a mass survey of Ukrainian schoolchildren was conducted by the Laboratory of Psychology of Mass Communication and Media Education, Institute for Social and Political Psychology of the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine in all regions of Ukraine. There were 1439 students of the 8th and 10th forms of general education schools who took part in the research. According to the results of the study we have identified three main roles for robots in which Ukrainian youth is ready to treat them well: as a home helper, as a friend, and as an extra brain (improving intelligence and memory). But we found that less than half of the sample was prepared to treat well the person whose limbs were replaced by computer prosthetics. The most tolerant to treat people with robotic prosthetics are respondents in the North of Ukraine; the lowest level of tolerance showed respondents from the Eastern regions. These results show the need in the wide introduction of various information companies and educational programs to increase the tolerance of youth to people with robotic prosthetics.