Effect of AI Chatbots´ Gender in the Business Context: Empirical Evidence from Debt Collection

Do Men Have No Need for “Feminist” Artificial Intelligence? Agentic and Gendered Voice Assistants in the Light of Basic Psychological Needs

“…These findings are also in line with the presumed desirability of same-gender interaction in HCI as proposed by Lee et al (2000) . However, since this evidence is not in line with other findings as outlined above ( Mullennix et al, 2003 ; Guo et al, 2020 ; Krahé et al, 2021 ), additional research needs to be conducted to get a clearer picture of causal mechanisms behind differential responses to gendered technology. To date, it has not been investigated whether attraction to similarity—in this case, to a nonhuman agent whose gender a user identifies with—is associated with higher BPN Fulfillment.…”

“…With regard to human preferences of voice gender, it should be noted that, starting in infancy, there seems to be a preference for the female voice ( Standley and Madsen, 1990 ). Stereotypically, females are labeled as warm, tender and sensitive, whereas males are more likely to be described as dominant, assertive and forceful ( Brems and Johnson, 1990 ; Guo et al, 2020 ). These stereotypical perceptions also align with the perception of female speech ( Wiley and Eskilson, 1985 ; Ko et al, 2006 ), which is generally attributed with greater likeability ( Krahé et al, 2021 ) and kindness ( Ko et al, 2006 ) than male speech.…”

“…Nonetheless, other research in the context of human voices and chatbots found that male and female users differ in their preferences for dominance and persuasiveness. In a recent study ( Guo et al, 2020 ), females had no preference for the gender of a chatbot that was trying to motivate them to pay overdue debt. Male participants, in contrast, were more likely to be persuaded by female chatbots.…”

“…These findings provide evidence that gender stereotypes are indeed influential for the perception of synthetic speech. In line with gender-stereotypical behavior, female-featured AI assistants may be expected to act less dominant in comparison with male featured ones ( Brems and Johnson, 1990 ; Guo et al, 2020 ). In reference to widely used systems such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, there has been increased criticism in recent years over the reproduction of traditional gender stereotypes through the default combination of female gender markers, for example, female names and voices, with low levels of agency, conforming to stereotypical gender roles ( Broverman et al, 1972 ) and outdated portrayals of women as passive servants ( West et al, 2019 ).…”

“…As indicated by previous findings, individuals differ in their preferences for and dislikes of computer systems based on gendered design cues ( Chang et al, 2018 ), speech ( Carli, 1990 ), and interaction style ( Thies et al, 2017 ; Maedche et al, 2019 ; Pizzi et al, 2021 ) of the system. One aspect that could account for these individual differences might be the gender of the user ( Guo et al, 2020 ).…”