Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Recently, gender-ambiguous (nonbinary) voices have been added to voice assistants to combat gender stereotypes and foster inclusion. However, if people react negatively to such voices, these laudable efforts may be counterproductive. In five preregistered studies (N = 3,684 adult participants) we found that people do react negatively, rating products described by narrators with gender-ambiguous voices less favorably than when they are described by clearly male or female narrators. The voices create a feeling of unease, or social disfluency, that affects evaluations of the products being described. These effects are best explained by low familiarity with voices that sound ambiguous. Thus, initial negative reactions can be overcome with more exposure.

Keywords

fluency voice gender familiarity social categorization prejudice open data open materials preregistered

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Alter

A. L.

Oppenheimer

D. M.

(2008). Easy on the mind, easy on the wallet: The roles of familiarity and processing fluency in valuation judgments. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15(5), 985–990. https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.5.985

Alter

A. L.

Oppenheimer

D. M.

(2009). Uniting the tribes of fluency to form a metacognitive nation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13(3), 219–235. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309341564

Baeck

Corthals

Van Borsel

(2011). Pitch characteristics of homosexual males. Journal of Voice, 25(5), e211–e214. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2010.10.019

Bernstein

M. J.

Young

S. G.

Hugenberg

(2007). The cross-category effect: Mere social categorization is sufficient to elicit an own-group bias in face recognition. Psychological Science, 18(8), 706–712. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01964.x

Birtel

M. D.

Crisp

R. J.

(2012). “Treating” prejudice: An exposure-therapy approach to reducing negative reactions toward stigmatized groups. Psychological Science, 23(11), 1379–1386. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612443838

Brigham

J. C.

(1993). College students’ racial attitudes. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 23(23), 1933–1967. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1993.tb01074.x

Cartei

Oakhill

Garnham

Banerjee

Reby

(2020). “This is what a mechanic sounds like”: Children’s vocal control reveals implicit occupational stereotypes. Psychological Science, 31(8), 957–967. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620929297

Diel

Lewis

(2022). The deviation-from-familiarity effect: Expertise increases uncanniness of deviating exemplars. PLOS ONE, 17(9), Article e0273861. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273861

Eberhardt

J. L.

Dasgupta

Banaszynski

T. L.

(2003). Believing is seeing: The effects of racial labels and implicit beliefs on face perception. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(3), 360–370. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167202250215

10.

Eyssel

Hegel

(2012). (S)he’s got the look: Gender stereotyping of robots. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 42(9), 2213–2230. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2012.00937.x

11.

Huart

Corneille

Becquart

(2005). Face-based categorization, context-based categorization, and distortions in the recollection of gender ambiguous faces. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41(6), 598–608. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2004.10.007

12.

Hugenberg

Bodenhausen

G. V.

(2004). Ambiguity in social categorization: The role of prejudice and facial affect in race categorization. Psychological Science, 15(5), 342–345. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00680.x

13.

Iyer

E. S.

Debevec

(1986). Gender stereotyping of products: Are products like people? In Proceedings of the 1986 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference 2014 (pp. 40–45). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11101-8_9

14.

Johnson

K. L.

Lick

D. J.

Carpinella

C. M.

(2015). Emergent research in social vision: An integrated approach to the determinants and consequences of social categorization. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 9(1), 15–30. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12147

15.

S. J.

Judd

C. M.

Blair

I. V.

(2006). What the voice reveals: Within-and between-category stereotyping on the basis of voice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(6), 806–819. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167206286627

16.

Lev-Ari

Keysar

(2010). Why don’t we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(6), 1093–1096. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2010.05.025

17.

Lick

D. J.

Johnson

K. L.

(2013). Fluency of visual processing explains prejudiced evaluations following categorization of concealable identities. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(3), 419–425. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2013.01.001

18.

Lick

D. J.

Johnson

K. L.

(2015). The interpersonal consequences of processing ease: Fluency as a metacognitive foundation for prejudice. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(2), 143–148. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721414558116

19.

Montoya

A. K.

Hayes

A. F.

(2017). Two-condition within-participant statistical mediation analysis: A path-analytic framework. Psychological Methods, 22(1), 6–27. https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000086

20.

Mullennix

J. W.

Johnson

K. A.

Topcu-Durgun

Farnsworth

L. M.

(1995). The perceptual representation of voice gender. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 98(6), 3080–3095. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.413832

21.

Nass

Brave

(2005). Wired for speech. MIT Press.

22.

Nass

Moon

Green

(1997). Are machines gender neutral? Gender-stereotypic responses to computers with voices. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 27(10), 864–876. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1997.tb00275.x

23.

Newman

E. J.

Schwarz

(2018). Good sound, good research: How audio quality influences perceptions of the research and researcher. Science Communication, 40(2), 246–257. https://doi.org/10.1177/1075547018759345

24.

Oleszkiewicz

Pisanski

Lachowicz-Tabaczek

Sorokowska

(2017). Voice-based assessments of trustworthiness, competence, and warmth in blind and sighted adults. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 24(3), 856–862. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-016-1146-y

25.

Owen

H. E.

Halberstadt

Carr

E. W.

Winkielman

(2016). Johnny Depp, reconsidered: How category-relative processing fluency determines the appeal of gender ambiguity. PLOS ONE, 11(2), Article e0146328. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146328

26.

Peracchio

L. A.

Tybout

A. M.

(1996). The moderating role of prior knowledge in schema-based product evaluation. Journal of Consumer Research, 23(3), 177–192. https://doi.org/10.1086/209476

27.

Pernet

C. R.

Belin

(2012). The role of pitch and timbre in voice gender categorization. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, Article 23. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00023

28.

Reber

Schwarz

Winkielman

(2004). Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: Is beauty in the perceiver’s processing experience? Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(4), 364–382. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0804_3

29.

Reber

Winkielman

Schwarz

(1998). Effects of perceptual fluency on affective judgments. Psychological Science, 9(1), 45–48. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00008

30.

Rudman

L. A.

Moss-Racusin

C. A.

Phelan

J. E.

Nauts

(2012). Status incongruity and backlash effects: Defending the gender hierarchy motivates prejudice against female leaders. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(1), 165–179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.10.008

31.

Schroeder

Epley

(2015). The sound of intellect: Speech reveals a thoughtful mind, increasing a job candidate’s appeal. Psychological Science, 26(6), 877–891. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615572906

32.

Schroeder

Epley

(2016). Mistaking minds and machines: How speech affects dehumanization and anthropomorphism. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145(11), 1427–1437. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000214

33.

Schwarz

Fontanari

A. M. V.

Costa

A. B.

Soll

B. M. B.

da Silva

D. C.

de Sá Villas-Bôas

A. P.

Cielo

C. A.

Bastilha

G. R.

Ribeiro

V. V.

Dorfman

M. E. K. Y.

Lobato

M. I. R.

(2018). Perceptual-auditory and acoustical analysis of the voices of transgender women. Journal of Voice, 32(5), 602–608. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2017.07.003

34.

Song

Schwarz

(2009). If it’s difficult to pronounce, it must be risky: Fluency, familiarity, and risk perception. Psychological Science, 20(2), 135–138. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02267.x

35.

Sutherland

C. A.

Young

A. W.

Mootz

C. A.

Oldmeadow

J. A.

(2015). Face gender and stereotypicality influence facial trait evaluation: Counter-stereotypical female faces are negatively evaluated. British Journal of Psychology, 106(2), 186–208. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12085

36.

West

Kraut

Chew

H. E.

(2019). I’d blush if I could: Closing gender divides in digital skills through education. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000367416

37.

Winkielman

Olszanowski

Gola

(2015). Faces in-between: Evaluations reflect the interplay of facial features and task-dependent fluency. Emotion, 15(2), 232–242. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000036

38.

Wolchover

(2011, October 1). Why do news anchors all talk the same? NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna44740700

39.

Yamada

Kawabe

Ihaya

(2013). Categorization difficulty is associated with negative evaluation in the “uncanny valley” phenomenon: Categorization and evaluation. Japanese Psychological Research, 55(1), 20–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5884.2012.00538.x

40.

Zajonc

R. B.

(1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9(2, Pt. 2), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025848

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.38 MB