Christina Anne Basedow

• The primary purpose of this dissertation is to investigate emotional and empathic responses to humans and to artificial entities. This thesis explores the similarities and differences in how we respond to each other, and to artificial entities. In addition, it uses research on human-artificial entity interaction to better understand what makes a response empathic and differentiates it from emotional responding. Finally, it examines how we emotionally and empathically respond to destruction of certain objects, and how responses differ based on the meaningfulness of the objects being harmed. This dissertation uses experimental results to explain how and why we feel emotions and empathy for things that are only sort of alive and what this means for us as humans in a world where our digital culture is constantly evolving.