I found this interesting study claiming that we don't want social robots that look like us because they threaten our identity. In a recent paper in the International Journal of Social Robotics, “Blurring Human–Machine Distinctions: Anthropomorphic Appearance in Social Robots as a Threat to Human Distinctiveness,” Francesco Ferrari and Maria Paola Paladino from the University of Trento, in Italy, and Jolanda Jetten from the University of Queensland, in Australia, argue that what humans don’t like about anthropomorphic robots is fundamentally about a perceived incursion on human uniqueness. "Specifically, social robots, because they are designed to resemble human beings, might threaten the distinctiveness of the human category. According to this threat to distinctiveness hypothesis, too much perceived similarity between social robots and humans triggers concerns because similarity blurs the boundaries between humans and machines and this is perceived as damaging humans, as a group, and as altering the human identity." http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/...ody-wants-social-robots-that-look-like-humans
