It's not what you say but how you say it: Examining the influence of perceived voice assistant gender and pitch on trust and reliance

Abstract

Voice assistants (VA) are virtual agents used to aid information seeking. Cues contained in speech, such as perceived gender and vocal pitch, may influence attitudes towards, and interactions with these agents. Given expansion of telehealth efforts and the potential for VA to advise patients on health-related topics outside of formal healthcare settings, the influence of VA vocal characteristics is examined in the context of medication instructions. Participants rated trust and reliance on VA after viewing medication labels and hearing recommendations from male and female agents with varying pitch. Results suggest agents perceived as female were rated as more trustworthy, while vocal pitch did not significantly influence trust. However, a trend of lower reliance with increasing pitch was observed. Additionally, participants relied significantly more on VA advice than medication labels when making decisions. Post-hoc analyses revealed trust and reliance primarily varied between participants. Pitch and gender explained only a small portion of within-participant variance. We found suggestive evidence for social categorizations distilled from vocal cues influencing interactions with agents delivering health-critical information. Future work should explore additional samples, vocal cues, and participant-level sources of variation.