As a psychologist who studies culture and cognition, I’m intrigued by the following observation: Robots and AI companions are much more popular in Japan and China than they are in the United States and Canada. Humanoid robots like Pepper are already providing care and emotional support for elderly people in Japan. In China, an AI companion called XiaoIce has more than half a billion registered users, making it the most popular social chatbot in the world.[1]

How can we explain this fascinating difference? Can a person’s cultural background shape their attitude toward human-like machines? If so, which features of culture might be responsible?

Attitudes Toward Social Chatbots

In a study published last month in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, social psychologist Dunigan Folk and his colleagues examined cultural variation in attitudes toward social chatbots (Folk, Wu, & Heine, 2025). They conducted two experiments online, both of which recruited large samples. In the first experiment, participants were 675 students at the University of British Columbia in Canada. In ethnic and cultural terms, 60% of the students were East Asian, and 40% were European. In the second experiment, participants were 984 adults in China, Japan, and the United States.

Both experiments used essentially the same design and procedure. Participants read and responded to a hypothetical scenario in which two people had a brief conversation online. The first person talked about their new job and family; the second person consistently replied in an upbeat and affirming manner.

Study participants were randomly assigned to read one of two versions of the hypothetical conversation. In version A, both individuals were humans. In version B, however, the first individual (the one with the new job) was a human, and the second individual was an AI-programmed chatbot. Before and after reading the conversation, participants answered a series of questions.

In the two experiments, East Asians had more positive attitudes toward the social chatbot than Europeans did.[2] Both cultural groups preferred the human-human interaction over the human-chatbot interaction, but East Asians did so by a much smaller margin than Europeans did. East Asians were also more likely to believe that robots possess some degree of consciousness and were more likely to anthropomorphize in general. (To anthropomorphize is to attribute human characteristics and behaviors to animals, machines, and inanimate objects.)

Animistic Spirits and Anthropomorphizing

Why are East Asians more likely than Europeans to anthropomorphize, to see robots and AI companions as having human-like qualities? Dunigan Folk and his colleagues offer a surprising yet compelling answer. They note that traditional Eastern religions such as Shintoism and Buddhism have animistic roots and do not make a sharp distinction between humans and the natural world. Shintoism, for example, maintains that spirits inhabit all life forms and physical objects. Buddhism asserts that “Buddhahood” can be obtained by anyone or anything—a person, a mountain, or a river (Abe, 1997).

According to the researchers, “The animistic content of Eastern religions may predispose people to view social chatbots as just as much a part of the natural world as any other form of life. In contrast, people in Western countries such as the United States may be more inclined to see chatbots as lifeless inanimate objects. As a result, East Asians may be more likely than Westerners to anthropomorphize technology.”

Assuming all this is correct, we should not be surprised to learn that robots and AI companions are more popular in China and Japan than they are in the United States and Canada. A person’s cultural background affects almost all aspects of their psychology, even how they feel about new AI-based technologies.

[1] A social chatbot is an AI dialogue system that can engage in empathetic conversations with humans. Unlike Siri and Alexa, Microsoft XiaoIce establishes a long-term emotional connection with a human user.

[2] The largest differences observed were between Chinese and European participants. Japanese participants usually scored somewhere between the other two cultural groups.