People feel more comfortable talking to female rather than male robots working in hotels, a study by Washington State University shows.
Conducted by Soobin Seo, an assistant professor of hospitality management at WSU's Carson Business College in Everett, the survey was published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management. It focuses on 170 people who took part in the experiment. They were given a choice of four humanoid robots working in a hotel in talk to: two male robots called Alex and a female robot, Sarah, as well as two robots with screens instead of faces.
It turned out that people felt more comfortable when they spoke to female robots.
"People have a tendency to feel more comfort in being cared for by females because of existing gender stereotyping about service roles...That gender stereotype appears to transfer to robot interactions, and it is more amplified when the robots are more human-like," Seo said.
The researcher also plans to investigate how customers' perceptions may be impacted by the personality of AI robots – depending on them being either extroverts or introverts.