Gender Ambiguity in Voice-Based Assistants: Gender Perception and Influences of Context

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Abstract

Recently emerging synthetic acoustically gender-ambiguous voices could contribute to dissolving the still prevailing genderism. Yet, are we indeed perceiving these voices as "unassignable"? Or are we trying to assimilate them into existing genders? To investigate the perceived ambiguity, we conducted an explorative 3 (male, female, ambiguous voice) × 3 (male, female, ambiguous topic) experiment (N = 343). We found that, although participants perceived the gender-ambiguous voice as ambiguous, they used a profoundly wide range of the scale, indicating tendencies toward a gender. We uncovered a mild dissolve of gender roles. Neither the listener's gender nor the personal gender stereotypes impacted the perception. However, the perceived topic gender indicated the perceived voice gender, and younger people tended to perceive a more male-like gender.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)49-74
Number of pages26
JournalHuman-Machine Communication
Volume5
Issue number1
Publication statusPublished - 2022
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

Scopus 85164952828
ORCID /0000-0003-3556-6517/work/141543665
ORCID /0000-0001-6515-9985/work/142245101

Keywords

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