Investigating User Perceptions and Stereotypic Responses to Gender and Age of Voice Assistants

Abstract

Technologies such as voice assistants can aid older adults aging in place by assisting with basic home and health tasks in daily routines. However, currently available voice assistants have a common design-they are vastly represented as young and female. Humans may apply stereotypes to human-computer interactions similarly to human-human interactions. When stereotypes are activated, users may lose trust or confidence in the abilities of the device, or even stop using the device all together. The two purposes of this study are to 1) investigate if users can detect the age and gender of voice assistants, and 2) understand the extent to which a voice assistant’s perceived gender, age, and reliability elicit stereotypic responses. A series of health-related vignettes will be utilized to assess perceptions of and stereotypic responses toward voice assistants in younger and older adults. In line with previous research examining healthcare agents (Pak et al., 2014), we hypothesize that voice assistants with younger male voices will be rated as more trustworthy and that high reliability will have a positive impact on ratings of trust.