TY - GEN
T1 - Are Female Chatbots More Empathic? - Discussing Gendered Conversational Agent through Empathic Design
AU - Jung, Ji Youn
AU - Bozzon, Alessandro
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Studies have shown that feminine chatbots are perceived as warmer (e.g., likable, friendly) and imbue more humanness to a machine than masculine or gender-androgynous chatbots. As chatbots are being widely deployed in various empathic contexts (e.g., revealing sensitive personal information or facilitating charity donations), how to design the gender of chatbots remains a critical question in the empathic design community. Should designers assign feminine identities to chatbots to improve empathic reactions? In this position paper, we explore the tension between designing empathic agents and the gender assignment of chatbots and how they can relate to the design of the metaphor of the chatbots. After analyzing the problem, we discuss the possible design strategy and their trade-offs. We conclude with possible future work directions that could inform CA gender design that elicits user empathy.
AB - Studies have shown that feminine chatbots are perceived as warmer (e.g., likable, friendly) and imbue more humanness to a machine than masculine or gender-androgynous chatbots. As chatbots are being widely deployed in various empathic contexts (e.g., revealing sensitive personal information or facilitating charity donations), how to design the gender of chatbots remains a critical question in the empathic design community. Should designers assign feminine identities to chatbots to improve empathic reactions? In this position paper, we explore the tension between designing empathic agents and the gender assignment of chatbots and how they can relate to the design of the metaphor of the chatbots. After analyzing the problem, we discuss the possible design strategy and their trade-offs. We conclude with possible future work directions that could inform CA gender design that elicits user empathy.
KW - conversational agents
KW - empathy-centric design
KW - gender
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85160416749&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3588967.3588970
DO - 10.1145/3588967.3588970
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85160416749
T3 - ACM International Conference Proceeding Series
BT - Proceedings of the 2nd Empathy-Centric Design Workshop, EmpathiCH 2023 - Collocated with ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PB - Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
T2 - 2nd Empathy-Centric Design Workshop, EmpathiCH 2023
Y2 - 23 April 2023 through 23 April 2023
ER -