[language] People read personality into a synthetic voice even whenthey know that it's made by a computer]

[H.M. Hubey]

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WE "HEAR" PERSONALITY IN COMPUTER-GENERATED SPEECH AND THE MORE IT
SOUNDS LIKE
US, THE MORE WE LIKE IT

Findings Hold Even When Cues Remind People That The Speech Isn't Human,
With
Broad Implications For Users, Designers And Web Merchants

WASHINGTON - People read personality into a synthetic voice even when
they know
that it's made by a computer. What's more, if the "voice" mirrors their
personalities, people will like and be more readily influenced by that
voice.
These new findings, which have implications for the design and use of
increasingly widespread text-to-speech (TTS) systems, appear in the
September
issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, published by
the
American Psychological Association (APA).

At Stanford University, Clifford Nass, Ph.D. and Kwan Min Lee, Ph.D.
assessed
how people evaluated, liked and were influenced by computer-synthesized
speech.
Text-to-speech systems are growing more popular because they make
computers and
Internet content more accessible to the visually impaired and blind, an
expanding group as the population ages, and to non-literate people,
including
young children. TTS systems also provide eyes-free information, for
example in
cell phones and cars.

In their first experiment (72 participants), Nass and Lee modulated the
synthetic voice reading book reviews from a mock Web book store, making
the
voice louder or softer, faster or slower, more varied in frequency, etc.
--
traits ascribed to extroversion or introversion (extroverts, for
example, speak
louder and faster than introverts). Participants accurately judged the
voices
as extroverted or introverted, which means they detected paralinguistic
cues
that are very hard to discern in typically flat synthetic speech. What's
more,
the 36 participants in the sample who described themselves as
extroverted
(according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Wiggins
personality test)
were more attracted to the extroverted computer voice, the site's book
reviews
and the reviewer -- and vice versa for the 36 introverts. Notably for
Web
merchants, when the voice personality reading a book review matched
their own,
participants were more likely to say they'd buy the book.

The second experiment presented participants (40 extroverts and 40
introverts)
with a mock Web auction and checked what happened not only when voice
personality "matched" the participant, but the spoken text itself, the
merchandise descriptions -- unlike the book reviews -- expressed a
personality.
The results replicated the first experiment and also supported the power
of
consistency, between voice and text and among voice, text and user.
Participants strongly preferred a voice when voice and text
personalities
matched; in that situation they also liked the text much more.
Participants
hearing "matches" also found the writer to be more credible and
likeable.

Significantly, participants responded as they did despite many
reminders, from
both the researchers and the voice itself, that the voice was not human.
Thus,
the results confirm the general observation that computers and
computer- -synthesized voices are "social actors;" in other words,
people
respond to a computerized voice that sounds like them just as they would
to a
real person who sounds like them. Just as with real people, they prefer
consistency in behavior because it's easier to understand and predict.

The findings, say Nass and Lee, mean that text-to-speech systems are not
merely
a convenience, but also a "rich social modality that must be tuned to
the user
and the content being presented."

Content providers and interface designers can use this information in
order to
make their products more appealing and persuasive, with obvious
implications
for Internet commerce. Nass and Lee write, "To maximize liking and
trust,
designers should set parameters, for example, words per minute or
frequency
range, that create a personality that is consistent with the user and
the
content being presented."

Article: "Does Computer-Synthesized Speech Manifest Personality?
Experimental
Tests of Recognition, Similarity-Attraction, and
Consistency-Attraction,"
Clifford Nass and Kwan Min Lee, Department of Communication, Stanford
University; Journal of Experimental Psychology - Applied, Vol 7. No.3

Clifford Nass can be reached by email at nass at stanford.edu or by phone
at
650-723-5499.

Full text of the article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office
and at
http://www.apa.org/journals/xap/press_releases/september01/pr2.html

The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC, is the
largest
scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the
United
States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's
membership includes more than 155,000 researchers, educators,
clinicians,
consultants and students. Through its divisions in 53 divisions of
psychology
and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial
associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a
profession and
as a means of promoting human welfare.

http://www.apa.org/releases/computervoice.html

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