Screaming at robots! Effects of AI-based voice assistant’s responses toward sexist insults on users’ sexism tolerance

In this online experiment, it is tested how an AI-based voice assistant’s (VA) response strategy to gender-stereotypical insults affects the tolerance of sexism toward women and user preferences. In the online experiment, participants are introduced to an AI-based voice assistant system. This fictitious VA called SARA is presented as a new voice assistant system that can be used at home or on a person’s mobile phone. It is able to answer questions and interacts in a human-like manner. In the experiment, participants are confronted with five gender-stereotypical insults of potential users toward the VA and hear the responses of the VA in the form of an audio file, while also seeing a visual representation of the VA. For every presented situation of insult and response, participants are tasked to evaluate the VA's response. As a manipulation, participants will be randomly assigned to one of three different VA response-style groups (avoiding, submissive and educational). In the second part of the experiment, participants will be confronted with a real-life scenario. A picture of a situation in an office that shows a man and a woman will be presented to the participants. They are tasked to imagine that the five subsequent gender-stereotypical insults are said by a man to a woman in such an office scenario. Participants are then prompted to evaluate how appropriate or inappropriate they perceive these gender-stereotypical insults in the described situation (sexism tolerance). In addition, out of three possible answers, participants will have to choose what they think is the women's most adequate response to the men's comment (preference of response to sexism). Research has shown that behavior towards a digital system, can transmit to interpersonal relationships in real life (Lee et al., 2021; Whitby 2008; Chin et al., 2020). Therefore, we assume that the VA's answers to gender-stereotypical insults affect sexism tolerance and their preferences in how to respond toward sexism.