Mistaking minds and machines: How speech affects dehumanization and anthropomorphism.

Abstract

Treating a human mind like a machine is an essential component of dehumanization, whereas attributing a humanlike mind to a machine is an essential component of anthropomorphism. Here we tested how a cue closely connected to a person’s actual mental experience—a humanlike voice—affects the likelihood of mistaking a person for a machine, or a machine for a person. We predicted that paralinguistic cues in speech are particularly likely to convey the presence of a humanlike mind, such that removing voice from communication (leaving only text) would increase the likelihood of mistaking the text’s creator for a machine. Conversely, adding voice to a computer-generated script (resulting in speech) would increase the likelihood of mistaking the text’s creator for a human. Four experiments confirmed these hypotheses, demonstrating that people are more likely to infer a human (vs. computer) creator when they hear a voice expressing thoughts than when they read the same thoughts in text. Adding human visual cues to text (i.e., seeing a person perform a script in a subtitled video clip), did not increase the likelihood of inferring a human creator compared with only reading text, suggesting that defining features of personhood may be conveyed more clearly in speech (Experiments 1 and 2). Removing the naturalistic paralinguistic cues that convey humanlike capacity for thinking and feeling, such as varied pace and intonation, eliminates the humanizing effect of speech (Experiment 4). We discuss implications for dehumanizing others through text-based media, and for anthropomorphizing machines through speech-based media.

Undervaluing Gratitude: Expressers Misunderstand the Consequences of Showing Appreciation

“…If people mistakenly anticipate a somewhat awkward interaction, then they may choose to express warmth through more psychologically distant communication media in which the awkwardness of a negative reaction might be dulled, such as in writing rather than in face-to-face interaction. The problem is that text-based media do not appear to communicate one's sincere intention, positive emotion, or deliberate thought as clearly as voice-based or faceto-face media (Hall & Schmid Mast, 2007;Kruger, Epley, Parker, & Ng, 2005;Schroeder & Epley, 2016;Zaki, Bolger, & Ochsner, 2009). If expected awkwardness is miscalibrated, then people might also choose media for communicating their gratitude that could be suboptimal as well (Kumar & Epley, 2018a).…”

Why Another Customer Channel? Consumers’ Perceived Benefits and Costs of Voice Commerce

“…Differences in the relevance of established constructs and theoretical models can be explained by the human-like behavioral characteristics of VAs. Through their ability to understand spoken input and to answer in a spoken manner, VAs can engage in human-like conversations with their users, thereby establishing a sense of anthropomorphism, that is the attribution of human-like characteristics to a VA by the user [24]. In respect of VAs, these human-like characteristics may even attenuate the negative effects of privacy invasions in the smart home context [25].…”

“…From extant research we know that the positive beliefs and perceived benefits related to VA use are efficiency, convenience, and enjoyment [8,9]. Research on VA characteristics further suggests that consumers may anthropomorphize VAs and form positive beliefs about their human-likeness [5,24]. To further account for the positive impact of anthropomorphism on consumers' trust beliefs, we add trust to the positive beliefs toward voice commerce in Table 2.…”

Trusting in Machines: How Mode of Interaction Affects Willingness to Share Personal Information with Machines

“…A machine that can create speech should be judged as more human-like than a machine that creates text. One set of experiments illustrated this directly: when participants read a piece of text that had been created by either a human or machine, they were less likely to believe the text had been written by a human than those who heard the same text spoken aloud [4].Furthermore, anthropomorphizing a machine by assuming it is more humanlike (e.g., seems more rational, competent, thoughtful, and even emotional) may increase trust. For example, self-driving cars with human voices seem more human-like and are trusted more by users [5].…”

“…Second, the quality of the voice is also likely to matter when evoking anthropomorphism. Prior research suggests that only humanlike speech with voices that naturalistically vary in pitch, amplitude, and rate of speech, can increase perceptions of humanization [4,7]. In contrast, more monotone and robotic voices may be judged no differently from text.…”