Socially Fluent, Socially Awkward: Artificial Intelligence Relational Talk Backfires in Commercial Interactions
Stephanie Kwari Dharmaputri, Anish Nagpal, Greg Nyilasy, Jing Lei
TLDR
AI's informal "relational talk" in commercial settings decreases customer satisfaction due to awkwardness, unless it's goal-relevant.
Key contributions
- AI's informal "relational talk" in commercial interactions negatively impacts customer satisfaction.
- This negative effect is driven by expectancy violation and perceived interaction awkwardness.
- Goal-relevant relational talk can mitigate the negative impact of AI's social features.
- Challenges the assumption that increased AI social fluency always improves user satisfaction.
Why it matters
This paper is important because it challenges the common belief that making AI more socially fluent automatically leads to better user satisfaction. It highlights that "awkwardness" is a significant, overlooked barrier in human-AI commercial interactions, offering crucial insights for designing more effective AI systems.
Original Abstract
Advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies' social fluency are being integrated into commercial interactions. As tools such as OpenAI's assistant are integrated into platforms such as Shopify, Klarna, and Visa, understanding consumer responses to AI social features become essential. One such feature is relational talk, an informal and non-obligatory social communication embedded in transactional exchanges. Across four experiments, we find: 1) a negative main effect of AI relational talk on satisfaction, mediated by expectancy violation and perceived interaction awkwardness, and 2) goal-relevant relational talk to attenuate this effect. This paper extends the literature by challenging the assumption that increased social fluency will improve satisfaction, and highlights the complexity of integrating social features into AI systems. It also identifies awkwardness as a key emotional response and barrier to effective human-AI interaction, showing that even in the absence of real social repercussions, perceived awkwardness in AI-led commercial interactions can elicit negative responses.
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