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Gender Ambiguity in Voice-Based Assistants: Gender Perception and Influences of Context
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. 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- text
- Gender Neutrality
- Ambiguity
- Voice Assistants
- Gender Perception
- Context Effects
- Cognition and Perception
- Communication Technology and New Media
- Gender and Sexuality
- Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication
- Personality and Social Contexts
- Science and Technology Studies
- Social Psychology
- Social Psychology and Interaction
- Speech and Rhetorical Studies