IMPLICATIONS OF PRODUCT ANTHROPOMORPHISM THROUGH DESIGN
1BARUCH COLLEGE, CUNY, NEW YORK, NY, USA AND ESADE, RAMON LLULL UNIVERSITY, SPAIN
2SAïD BUSINESS SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, OXFORD, UK
[Both authors contributed equally. We would like to thank Tanushree Agrawal, Rahil Hosseini and Tilmann Kerkhoff for their assistance with this project.]
There is a universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object, those qualities, with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious …
David Hume, The Natural History of Religion (1757)
Anthropomorphism, the inclination to attribute human-like properties, characteristics, or mental states to nonhuman agents and objects (Epley, Waytz & Cacioppo, 2007), is both a universal and enduring phenomenon. It spans behaviors as familiar as seeing faces in cloud formations and naming one’s car, and as the opening quote illustrates, the tendency was recognized as early as the 18th century. Today, anthropomorphic thought continues to manifest across a wide gamut of contexts and circumstances.
The prevalence of modern anthropomorphism has, in part, been attributed to the marketing efforts of companies that frequently urge consumers to view their products and brands as human-like (Wan & Aggarwal, 2015). Brand anthropomorphism is often encouraged through the use of spokes-characters or mascots (e.g., the Geiko gecko, Michelin Man, or Mr. Clean) as a means for developing a brand’s personality (Aaker, 1997), and with hopes it will allow consumers to develop more personal relationships with brands (Aggarwal, 2012; Wan & Aggarwal, 2015). Accordingly, brands that can be “humanized” are often seen as stronger candidates for long-term business success (Aggarwal & McGill, 2007).
While examples of brand “humanization” abound, the focus of this chapter is more specifically on product anthropomorphism. Product anthropomorphism refers to the notion that tangible objects themselves, irrespective of their brand, can be humanized. Thus, brand anthropomorphism and product anthropomorphism represent theoretically distinct concepts, however, because brands are often (but not always) embodied in the form of a tangible product, these constructs may sometimes overlap.
Product anthropomorphism is supported by research on possessions, which indicates that people easily attribute human-like qualities to inanimate objects (Kiesler, 2005; Wallendorf, Belk, & Heisley, 1988). However, while consumers might spontaneously anthropomorphize products on their own accord, product manufacturers can strategically position their products to provoke anthropomorphic thought, which can have significant consequences on downstream consumer behaviors.
In this chapter, we first discuss the underlying reasons behind why people anthropomorphize inanimate objects. We then explore various ways in which product manufacturers can deliberately trigger anthropomorphism through a product’s design, and describe some of the powerful consumer responses that can materialize as a result. Finally, we describe which individuals are most likely to engage in anthropomorphic thought, and conclude by summarizing the nuances and best practices of product anthropomorphism through design.
Why Do People Anthropomorphize Products?
Understanding the underlying reasons behind people’s tendency to anthropomorphize inanimate objects allows for more theoretically sound conceptualizations of what the antecedents and consequences of product anthropomorphism might look like. Academic research has indeed proposed several potential explanations to at least partially account for the human tendency to engage in anthropomorphic thought.
Contemporary scholars in psychology have isolated three major factors that can explain our predisposition to anthropomorphize: elicited agent knowledge, effectance, and sociality (Epley, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2007; Epley, Akalis, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2008). The first determinant, elicited agent knowledge, is cognitive in nature, and refers to our tendency to apply existing knowledge about humans as a basis for understanding nonhuman agents. Our knowledge about humans is more readily available than other types of knowledge, partially due to the simple fact that we have direct and immediate access to the phenomenological experience of being a human, but do not have such access to the phenomenological experience of any nonhuman agent (Epley, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2007; Nagel, 1974). Accordingly, knowledge about ourselves and about other humans is developed from a very early age, is extremely rich in detail, and is accordingly easy to apply during times of judgment.
The second factor, effectance, is motivational by nature, and refers to a human’s need to interact with their surroundings. Just as one’s own human experience serves as a useful knowledge structure when trying to understand nonhuman agents (as per the elicited agent knowledge explanation above), it can also serve as a mechanism for reducing uncertainty surrounding their interactions with objects (Epley, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2007). In other words, anthropomorphism can function as a way for people to both comprehend and predict the behavior of nonhuman elements (Dawes & Mulford, 1996), which ultimately gives people greater feelings of control over their environments (Burger & Copper, 1979; Barrett & Johnson, 2003). This might explain why anthropomorphic thought has been shown to increase during times of rapid technological change or economic uncertainty (Guthrie, 1993), and why people treat complex products like computers in a human-like manner (e.g., yelling at them or hitting them when they do not function as expected; Nass & Moon, 2000; Nass, Fogg, & Moon, 1996; Luczak et al., 2003).
The third explanation, sociality, refers to our innate need to establish social connections with other people. It is also motivational by nature, and suggests that if people lack the opportunity for social connection with other humans, they might compensate by humanizing nonhuman agents (Epley, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2007). This reasoning has been proposed to explain why those lacking in human social connection are more inclined to believe in anthropomorphic religious agents (e.g., God) and to perceive animals (e.g. pets) as being human-like (Epley, Akalis, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2008). Importantly, this logic has also been applied to explain the human tendency to anthropomorphize brands (Puzakova, Kwak, & Rocereto, 2009; Chen, Wan, & Levy, 2017) and physical objects (Hadi & Valenzuela, 2014).
Other research has more narrowly focused on the human inclination to recognize and identify faces in nonhuman objects. As a species whose survival depends on its social interactions, we have developed an innate tendency to process facial information very quickly and as a result, from small objects like buttons to large-scale artifacts like houses, we quickly detect features that are analogues to facial parts and perceive the whole object as a face (Brosch, Sander, & Scherer, 2007; Öhman & Dimberg, 1978). Some developmental psychologists and neuroscientists hypothesize that this is because the brain gives the face priority over other shapes or objects, and point to the fact that infants can distinguish the features of a face almost immediately after birth (Farzin, Hou, & Norcia, 2012), even recognizing faces in nonhuman objects arranged in the pattern of eyes and mouth. Others theorize that we are so lenient in registering faces because of our exposure to a large number of faces on a day-to-day basis (Bi et al., 2014) or because evolutionarily, the cost of missing a face has always been higher than the cost of mistaking a non-face to be a face (Parr, 2011). These explanations support the notion that as humans, we are sensitive to any potential human presence and thus have flexible criteria for detecting it (Guthrie, 1993).
While these underlying motivations and dispositions suggest people may readily anthropomorphize inanimate objects without provocation, there are several product-specific characteristics that can effectively trigger and facilitate the manifestation of anthropomorphic thought. We discuss these product characteristics next.
Anthropomorphism Through Product Design
In practice, anthropomorphic thought can be triggered in many ways, whether it be through advertising copy (Aggarwal & McGill, 2007) or through brand personality (Aaker, 1997). However, one of the most effective means for inducing anthropomorphism of a tangible object is through its design features. We discuss a brief selection of these design elements next.
Human-Like Visual Features
Although in principle any object is susceptible to being anthropomorphized, Chandler and Schwarz (2010) note that people are significantly more likely to anthropomorphize objects that exhibit visual human-like physical features such as hands (Woodward, 1999), eyes (Haley & Fessler, 2005; Jipson & Gelman, 2007), and human-body shape (Aggarwal & McGill, 2007). Indeed, it is common practice for engineers and product designers to mimic the human form in products, whether explicitly (e.g., the Honda Asimo Robot) or more subtly (e.g., the “friendly” face on the grille of the Volkswagen Bug).
In fact, many automobile manufacturers have focused on designing car grilles to resemble the human face in an attempt to appeal to buyers (Welsh, 2006). Research suggests that smiles are more associated with the human schema than frowns are (Aggarwal & McGill, 2007), but while some car manufacturers hope a smiling car will appeal to consumers in the same way amiable spokes-characters do, other companies find a mean face more in line with the brand imagery they wish to convey (e.g., an aggressive, “don’t-mess-with-me” type vehicle). Based on human face perception theories, Landwehr, McGill and Herrmann (2011) suggest that friendliness perceptions are formed by a car’s grille (mouth), while aggressiveness can be communicated through both the grille and headlights (eyes). Interestingly, they find that the best-liked combination is that of an upturned (friendly) grille with slanted (aggressive) headlights, which triggers a positive affective state of both high pleasure and arousal. Another potential benefit of “aggressive” visual car features is that people tend to process threatening faces more accurately and quickly than non-threatening faces (Öhman & Dimberg, 1978). A recent eye-tracking study (Purucker, Sprott, & Herrmann, 2014) indeed confirmed that threatening car fronts attract more attention than friendly designs, though participants ultimately preferred designs that featured both threatening and non-threatening features.
Human-Like Speech
One efficient way manufacturers of technological products (e.g., cell phones, computers) induce anthropomorphic thought is by integrating a human voice into their products (Lee, 2010; Takayama & Nass, 2008). In fact, Zhang and colleagues (2010) report that incorporating a human (versus machine-like) voice into a robot not only created greater perceptions of humanness (see also Eyssel et al., 2012; Kiesler, Powers, Fussell, & Torrey, 2008), but even increased people’s physiological arousal (heart rate, skin conductance) and emotional responsiveness to the robots. These findings suggest that removing a human voice from an object can make it seem relatively mindless (Schroeder & Epley, 2014). Consistent with this account, scholars have found that clearly machine-like speech might inhibit, if not completely suppress, social responses to computers (Nass & Brave, 2005). This finding is supported by literature showing that verbal accents that differ from one’s own can trigger prejudice and distrust (Dixon, Mahoney, & Cocks, 2002; Kinzler, Dupoux, & Spelke, 2007; Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010), and can accordingly reduce humanness perceptions (Waytz, Heafner, & Epley, 2014).
Movement
The words lifeless and motionless are used as synonyms in everyday language (thesaurus.com), suggesting that we tend to attribute life to things that display motion, and lack of life to things that do not move. Movement has indeed been shown to provoke anthropomorphic thought, and research accordingly suggests that products that convey physical motion are more likely to be anthropomorphized (Barrett & Johnson, 2003; Wan & Aggarwal, 2015). Anthropomorphic thought is especially likely to manifest when products seem to move: (1) in an apparently unprovoked (e.g. self-propelled) manner, or (2) independently of visible human control (Barrett & Johnson, 2003). For example, participants who lacked control over the movement of marbles were significantly more likely to attribute agency to the marbles (Barrett & Johnson, 2003).
Not surprisingly, likelihood of anthropomorphism increases when objects move similarly to humans (Tremoulet & Feldman, 2000). For example, if the speed of the object is more in line with natural human speed, the object is more likely to be perceived as being human-like (Morewedge, Preston, & Wegner, 2007). However, human-like movement can be even more nuanced: gestural anthropomorphic forms (DiSalvo & Gemperle, 2003) use motions or poses reminiscent of human action to express meaning, intention, or instruction. For example, the Macintosh OS X login screen has a rectangular window with a text entry field for users to enter their password, and if a user enters an incorrect password, the window quickly and briefly shakes from side to side – a common human gesture to express “no” (DiSalvo & Gemperle, 2003). This action tells the user that the password entered was incorrect with a very gentle suggestion, imitating a human headshake.
Bundling and Packaging Design
Finally, a product’s groupings vis-à-vis other products can also influence anthropomorphism tendencies. For example, consumers are more likely to associate a bundled package of differently sized bottles as a “family” than a package of same-sized bottles (Aggarwal & McGill, 2007). Further, advertisers often subliminally trigger anthropomorphic behavior by positioning inanimate products in human-like scenarios, for example, portraying products as part of a social group by showing products that seemingly lean on each other or that marry one another (Guthrie, 1993).
Given that there are so many ways marketers and designers can deliberately induce product anthropomorphism through design, the next question is what consequences of such triggered anthropomorphic thought might look like.
Consumer Responses to Anthropomorphized Products
Anthropomorphizing a nonhuman object does not simply involve ascribing superficial human characteristics (e.g., a human-like face or body) to it, but rather attributing essential human characteristics to the agent (namely a human-like mind, capable of thinking and feeling). Accordingly, anthropomorphic thought can considerably shape a variety of consumer responses to products. We discuss some of these implications next.
Product Evaluation
Adding a face-like trait to a product has been consistently shown to enhance product liking in categories such as automobiles, cell phones, soft drinks and wine (Landwehr, McGill, & Herrmann, 2011; Labroo, Dhar, & Schwarz, 2008; Aggarwal & McGill, 2007). However, these evaluative effects seem to be contingent on certain contextual requirements. As part of a contingent framework, an important finding comes from Aggarwal and McGill (2007), who demonstrate that anthropomorphizing a product does not always improve consumers’ evaluation since schema congruity is a prerequisite for anthropomorphic visual traits to positively shape consumer-product evaluations. In their studies, they specifically demonstrate that when a human schema is primed (e.g., by describing an object in the first person), visual product traits associated with humanness (e.g., a smile on a car grille) exert a positive effect on consumer attitudes toward the product, whereas that relationship does not hold when participants are primed with an object schema (e.g., when the product was described in the third person). This is because schemata provide conceptual systems for people to organize and understand new information, and while congruent matches result in positive emotions, incongruent matches can cause frustration (Mandler, 1982).
Further, more specific perceptions of friendliness and aggressiveness can be inferred from a product’s facial expressions. Social psychology research has shown that the configuration of eyes (e.g., arched versus slanted) and mouth (e.g., upturned versus downturned) together are good indicators of another person’s inner feelings (Bassili, 1979). To study how these findings translate to a product anthropomorphism context, Landwehr, McGill, and Herrmann (2011) designed and tested 64 different configurations of car grilles. Their results suggest that people use the same heuristics in inferring a product’s personality as those they use in their social interactions: the mouth is the best predictor of friendliness whereas both mouth and eyes contribute to perceptions of aggressiveness. However, in accordance with the pleasure–arousal theory of emotions (Russell, 1980), the findings show a more nuanced effect on consumers’ evaluations and liking of the cars: a combination of both friendliness and aggressiveness leads to the greatest levels of liking since friendliness contributes to the “pleasure” factor of liking while aggressiveness provides the “arousal” factor.
Labroo, Dhar, and Schwarz (2008) also demonstrate that anthropomorphic appearance in a product (e.g., a watch that appears to be smiling when its hands are set to 10:10) may, in some instances, increase liking of that product. However, they propose a different mechanism behind the improved evaluation: perceptual fluency. The logic of a fluency-based process holds that the crucial variable behind increased evaluations is the match between the prime and the target (e.g., if primed with frown-related semantics, visual frowns are preferred, and the same is true for smiles). Hence, matching prime-target combinations should result in enhanced liking (even when the primes emphasize the frowning expression of the target), whereas mismatching prime-target combinations should result in reduced liking (even when the primes emphasize the smiling expression of the target). Thus, the affective nature of the stimuli seems to be less important than the nature to which it matches the semantic prime.
In sum, these findings suggest that while anthropomorphic traits in products can improve product evaluations, this can depend on a number of contextual and design-specific contingencies.
Consumer-Product Relationships
Literature on consumer-brand relationships is based on the implicit assumption that products can appear, at least to some extent, as human-like entities to consumers (Fournier, 1998), and the same logic can be applied to consumer-product relationships. When a product is anthropomorphized, it creates an agent that, “deserves concern for its own well–being” (Epley, Akalis, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2008). Accordingly, consumers may engage with anthropomorphized products in a more emotionally driven fashion, and show greater care and concern than they would for non-anthropomorphized agents. As an example of this, Chandler and Schwarz (2010) found that consumers induced to think of their car in anthropomorphic terms were less willing to replace it, and gave less weight to its quality when making replacement decisions. Instead, they attended more to features usually considered relevant in the interpersonal domain (e.g., those which would determine a good companion, like having a warm personality). Similarly, Hadi and Valenzuela (2014) found that consumers may grow emotionally attached to products with anthropomorphic traits if they inadvertently perform affectionate gestures with the product (e.g., holding a product in a manner that mimics an embrace).
Further, given that brands are often embodied in a tangible form (e.g., “Toyota” taking the form of a vehicle), a brand’s personality might interact with anthropomorphic product traits to shape consumer-product relationships. For example, human-like brands often serve different roles in the eyes of consumers. Of these roles, “brand-as-partner” (Fournier, 1998) has enjoyed a wealth of research interest, together with the role of “brand-as-servant,” based on the idea that product-based traits need to clearly connect with desirable consumer benefits. In this context, Kim and Kramer (2015) suggest that materialism, as a personality trait, explains how consumers respond to anthropomorphized products that convey “servant” brand roles. Specifically, people showcasing a high degree of materialism tend to prefer relationships in which others are submissive to them (Twenge & Campbell, 2009) and, as such, are willing to pay more for anthropomorphized products when the brand role is perceived as servant (as opposed to partner).
Finally, research has proposed different mechanisms through which product anthropomorphism may lead to increased brand loyalty. Rauschnabel and Ahuvia (2014) suggest that product anthropomorphism increases opportunities for the generation of brand love, an important antecedent to brand loyalty. This is because anthropomorphic product traits can lead consumers to heuristically categorize brands as humans when they lack product-related knowledge, and since brand love is a manifestation of interpersonal love, anthropomorphism makes such a relationship with brands plausible. Other scholars have suggested that anthropomorphic traits can also help consumers integrate brands into their own self-concept (mediated by perceived similarity between consumers and brands; Aron, Aron, Tudor, & Nelson, 1991), which serves as an alternative method of increasing brand loyalty.
Mimicry
Perhaps one of the most fascinating elements from a consumer behavior point of view is anthropomorphism’s influence on subliminal behavior and mimicry. One such automatic behavior has been coined the “chameleon effect,” which refers to the passive and non-conscious mimicry of the postures, mannerisms and facial expressions of one’s interaction partners (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). Research has shown that this chameleon effect can also transpire with nonhuman agents: if individuals perceive nonhuman agents (e.g., animals) to have human-like traits, exposure to them can elicit various automatic behavior responses (Baldwin, Carrell, & Lopez, 1990; Chartrand, Fitzsimons, & Fitzsimons, 2008). In two experiments Chartrand and colleagues (2008) showed that participants primed by an anthropomorphized agent associated with loyalty (a dog) were more likely to behave loyally and engage in activities that indicated loyalty. This was in contrast to cat-primed participants who were less loyal than both dog-primed participants and a control group.
This mimicry phenomenon has also been applied to consumer interactions with products. For example, “smiling” objects can inadvertently lead the perceiver to smile back in response, and positively bias product evaluations accordingly (Howard & Gengler, 2001; Chartrand, Fitzsimons & Fitzsimons, 2008). Accordingly, the usage and outcome of subliminal smiles and other mimicry triggering expressions in a product may be of great concern to marketers and policy-makers alike.
Importantly, the personality of an anthropomorphized object can add nuance to the nature of mimicked responses. For example, just as we associate certain human personality traits with aggressive driving (Deffenbacher, Huff, Lynch, Oetting, & Salvatore, 2000), consumers can also perceive vehicles as having personalities related to aggression on the road (Benfield, Szlemko, & Bell, 2007). In one noteworthy study, researchers found that a vehicle’s perceived personality (as measured by the “Driver Anger Expression Inventory”) was a better predictor of driving behavior than the driver’s own personality, suggesting that drivers might mimic the anthropomorphic traits of the vehicles they happen to be driving.
Self-Control
Self-control becomes relevant when people face a self-conflict between a desirable short-term temptation and their long-term goals. When the short-term temptation dominates in this “tug-of-war,” it is typically due to an elevation in the desirability of the temptation (Redden & Haws, 2013) or reduced feelings of self-conflict (Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001), and anthropomorphism can influence both of these levers. Regarding the latter, anthropomorphized products can reduce a consumer’s feeling of self-conflict by introducing another agent whose presence allows the consumer to offload any responsibility for bad decisions (Hur, Koo, & Hofmann, 2015). In a series of experiments, Hur and colleagues (2015) found that the anthropomorphization of products (e.g., cookies and pocket TVs that were given either a face or name) led participants to report reduced feelings of conflict between their short-term consumption of the products and their long-term goals (e.g., dieting or academic goals). In support of their theorizing, these authors consequently found that participants were less likely to take responsibility for their choices when the products involved were anthropomorphized.
Another way that anthropomorphized products can impair individuals’ self-control is by simply being cute. Certain anthropomorphic traits incorporate “kindchenschema” (baby schema) that induce a sense of cuteness by using new-born features that can trigger individuals’ natural tendency to be caring and supportive in response to infants (Brosch, Sander, & Scherer, 2007). Interestingly, scholars have recently suggested that whimsical cuteness in particular can elicit fancifulness and playfulness in consumers. Nenkov and Scott (2014) found that exposure to whimsical cuteness in products can prime consumers with mental representations of fun, which makes them focus more on self-rewarding aspects of indulgence. Through four experiments, they demonstrated that whimsically cute anthropomorphized products increased participants’ self-reward indices and led to more indulgent behavior, even when the behavior was unrelated to the product (e.g., using whimsically cute anthropomorphic gift cards increased ordering of lowbrow movies, as compared to neutral or non-whimsical anthropomorphic gift cards). Thus, there are multiple ways through which product anthropomorphism might reduce individuals’ self-control, although the specific nature of the anthropomorphic traits (e.g., whether or not it is cute and/or whimsical) appears to make a difference in some contexts.
Trust and Risk-Taking
Today’s rapidly changing technological landscape can represent a challenge for some consumers, who might lack trust in technology and be skeptical of its purported benefits. Anthropomorphic thought can help remedy this skepticism and distrust, and is especially consequential in consumer-product interactions where being mindful and conscious are important criteria for evaluation and accountability (Waytz, Heafner, & Epley, 2014; Young & Waytz, 2013). For example, in a vehicle simulation study, Waytz and colleagues (2014) found that participants reported higher levels of trust in autonomous vehicles (e.g., self-driving cars) that featured anthropomorphic cues (e.g., a name, gender, voice) than in those vehicles that lacked anthropomorphic cues. Moreover, participants in the simulated anthropomorphized vehicle felt less stressed from an observer’s point of view, and in the event of an accident, were less likely to blame their vehicles.
Another consequence of product anthropomorphism is that it can lead consumers to apply social schemas to objects, and evaluate those objects in the way they would evaluate humans (Epley, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2007). Accordingly, research has suggested that while product anthropomorphism can influence consumers’ feelings of security and trust, it can ultimately depend on that individual’s innate or primed relationship with humans in general. For example, Kim and McGill (2011) studied how an individual’s sense of social power influences their responses to anthropomorphized agents. Specifically, they find that when participants have low perceived social power (e.g., feel little control over other agents), they become less risk-seeking when interacting with anthropomorphized (versus non-anthropomorphized) objects (e.g., slot machines). Conversely, those high in perceived power became more risk-seeking when the objects were anthropomorphized. In other words, participants’ general belief about their degree of control over other humans was also applied to anthropomorphized agents, and ultimately shaped their behavior accordingly.
Persuasion and Acceptance of Recommendations
In some marketing communications, the messenger may take the form of an anthropomorphized product, which acts as a spokes character in the communication. In such cases, it might become more relevant to compare the anthropomorphic agents’ effectiveness to the effectiveness of a human spokesperson. However, the persuasiveness of any given message hinges critically on both the messenger’s characteristics and the receiver’s dispositional level of trust (Rotter, 1967). Results of one study demonstrated that for certain advertisements (those that were neither highly relevant nor highly irrelevant to the viewer), participants low in dispositional trust were more persuaded by anthropomorphized product messengers than by human messengers (those high in dispositional trust did not show any difference in persuasion; Touré-Tillery & McGill, 2015). According to the authors, this discriminative behavior by those low in dispositional trust is related to their general skeptical attitude toward humans, which becomes attenuated as human cues decrease in anthropomorphized objects. However, in highly relevant advertisements, the reverse pattern was shown for those high in dispositional trust: they were demonstrably more persuaded by human messengers than by anthropomorphized product messengers, suggesting that the role of trustworthiness might become more pronounced when the content of the advertisement is relevant to those viewers.
Finally, anthropomorphism can also play a role in the context of recommendation systems. Recommendation systems (or decision support systems) are technological interfaces providing recommendations to consumers in order to assist them in making better, more satisfying decisions within online experiences such as shopping on Amazon.com, customizing shoes on Nike.com or selecting the right computer on Dell.com (Qiu & Benbasat, 2009). Recommendation systems are widely used, as they improve consumer decision quality by reducing information overload and search complexity during online interactions (Maes, 1994). Trust in recommendation systems is a determinant predictor of their effectiveness since it affects the degree to which users accept the offered recommendations (Atoyan, Duquet, & Robert, 2006). Research has shown that adding anthropomorphic traits (e.g., the image of a person, a human name or voice-based interactions) is an important element in building trust in the recommendations offered (Choi, Lee, & Kim, 2011; Qiu & Benbasat, 2010). This is because adding anthropomorphic traits increases the feeling of social presence. Social presence has been defined as “the degree to which a user feels access to the intelligence, intentions, and sensory impressions of another” (Biocca, Harms, & Burgoon, 2003). The attribution of social presence is a common phenomenon in user-device interactions (Reeves & Nass, 1996) and has been shown to make information exchanges feel more valuable as it implies that there is a certain level of agency and intent behind them (Skalski & Tamborini, 2007). Accordingly, adding anthropomorphic traits has been shown to increase consumer reliance on the recommendations offered and speed up user reaction times to the interface (e.g., leading to faster user response times when answering personal and product-related questions; Pak, Fink, Price, Bass, & Sturre, 2012). Further, and consistent with the prediction of the similarity-attraction theory (Byrne, Griffitt, & Stefaniak, 1967), an ethnicity-match between users and anthropomorphized recommendation system can additionally increase the positive impact of social presence on user responses (Qiu & Benbasat, 2010).
How do Individual-Level Traits Influence Responses to Anthropomorphic Design?
Thus far, we have described product-specific characteristics that can probabilistically increase the occurrence of anthropomorphic thought, and highlighted some of the consumer responses that product anthropomorphism can generate. However, not all consumers are equally inclined to anthropomorphizing products, and further, individuals’ reactions to anthropomorphic products can be demonstrably different depending on their dispositional traits. Accordingly, consumer-level characteristics play a formative role in predicting outcomes of product anthropomorphism through design.
A sizable body of academic literature has demonstrated that certain people are more likely to anthropomorphize objects than others. In fact, an Individual Differences in Anthropomorphism Questionnaire (IDAQ) was developed to psychometrically assess stable individual differences in the tendency to attribute human-like attributes to nonhuman agents (Waytz, Cacioppo, & Epley, 2010). However, a number of more general individual differences have been shown to correlate with increased anthropomorphic tendency, and these can be classified according to the two motivational determinants of anthropomorphism we discussed earlier in the chapter: sociality and effectance. As previously explained, when lacking social connection with other humans, people may compensate by creating humans out of nonhuman agents through anthropomorphism (Epley, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2007). Indeed, research has found that individuals who are either situationally or chronically lonely are more likely to anthropomorphize religious agents (e.g., God), animals (e.g., pets), and objects (e.g., gadgets).
Explicit manipulations that trigger an effectance motivation (e.g., increasing the perceived unpredictability of a nonhuman agent or increasing incentives for mastery) have been shown to increase anthropomorphic thought in participants (Waytz, Cacioppo, & Epley, 2010), but individuals who exhibit this motivation by default are also more likely to anthropomorphize. For example, people with a high need for control (Epley, Waytz, Akalis, & Cacioppo, 2008) and high personal need for structure (Davidson & Laroche, 2016) have been shown to anthropomorphize more readily than those who score low on those dimensions.
Further, research has also isolated lifestyle variables that may influence one’s inclination to anthropomorphize. For example, one study suggested that pet owners might be more subject to anthropomorphic tendencies than non-pet owners, because consistent exposure to domesticated animals can increase the use of anthropomorphism as a mental shortcut (Chartrand, Fitzsimons, & Fitzsimons, 2008). Conversely, scholars have suggested that people from cultures that rely on direct contact with livestock for survival may be less likely to anthropomorphize animals, due to the necessary utilization of animals as a food source (Epley et al., 2007). In sum, a number of individual characteristics, whether based on personality, lifestyle, or culture, have been proposed to explain the variation in people’s tendency to anthropomorphize.
Importantly, just as individual differences can predict the likelihood of anthropomorphism, they can also predict the manner in which one responds to an agent that has already been anthropomorphized. For example, individuals who score high in need for sociality are not only more prone to having anthropomorphic thoughts to begin with, but they have also been shown to respond more positively to anthropomorphic traits in brands and products as compared to those individuals who score low in this dispositional need (Chen, Wan & Levy, 2017). Similarly, other research has found that individuals with a high need for social connection or effectance respond more favorably to anthropomorphic conservation messages (e.g., messages asking them to save “Mr. Nature”) than non-anthropomorphic conservation messages (e.g., messages asking them to save “Nature”), whereas this was not the case for people who exhibit low levels of those motivations (Tam, 2015). Individual characteristics can also be associated with less favorable reactions to anthropomorphized (versus non-anthropomorphized) objects. As previously mentioned, for example, Kim and McGill (2011) found that people with low feelings of social power perceived risk-bearing entities (e.g., slots machines and skin cancer) to pose higher risks when anthropomorphized (versus non-anthropomorphized).
Interestingly however, individual differences not only predict how people will respond to anthropomorphic objects compared to non-anthropomorphic ones, but can also affect how they respond to anthropomorphic agents relative to actual humans. As mentioned before, Touré-Tillery and McGill (2015) find that people low in interpersonal trust respond more positively to messages delivered by “talking” products than to those delivered by real people. Thus, while the majority of the dispositional traits we have discussed thus far imply non-anthropomorphized objects are the default alternative to anthropomorphized objects, there is a need to consider whether another human’s involvement is being supplemented or replaced.
Summary and Best Practices
As we have seen, product anthropomorphism can be induced through design features such as visual traits, human-like speech, physical movements, and bundling. This has an effect on consumer-product interactions since humans have been evolutionarily wired to quickly detect and evaluate human-like cues. Importantly however, responses to anthropomorphized products can vary widely. For example, while anthropomorphism can improve overall product evaluations, this will heavily depend on the specific nature of the anthropomorphic cues (e.g., whether the visual features convey friendliness or aggression; a combination seems to be optimal for car grille design). Further, product anthropomorphism can improve consumer-product relationships, but this only seems to be the case when the anthropomorphic agent embodies traits associated with good companionship. Also, while anthropomorphic features and human-like interfaces (recreating social presence) can help increase consumer trust in technology and users’ inclination to accept recommendations, anthropomorphic thought can be detrimental to one’s self-control (e.g., leading people to consume indulgent foods) and can increase risky behavior (e.g., over-exposure to sun or irresponsible gambling). Thus, it is overly simplistic to assume product anthropomorphism through design will always have beneficial consequences since outcomes will depend on the specific nature of the anthropomorphic features and the domain of the consumer response.
Finally, delineating consumer responses to product anthropomorphism through design becomes even more complex when we consider how consumers’ individual-level traits come into play, since those dispositional factors not only determine whether or not anthropomorphic thought becomes manifest but they can also decide whether responses to anthropomorphized agents will be favorable or unfavorable. In sum, the outcomes of anthropomorphic product design will heavily depend on product-level, situational, and individual-level factors. Thus, the most successful applications of anthropomorphism through product design will be those that consider the user’s characteristics, the product and brand features, and the product’s anticipated usage context and conditions.
While this chapter was not intended to be comprehensive, the purpose was to highlight the complex manner in which product anthropomorphism might become manifest and the nuanced ways that it might come to shape consumer outcomes. Further, as anthropomorphic design gets more and more sophisticated and believable (e.g., via convincing visual features and speech abilities) and is paired with artificial intelligence, we believe product anthropomorphism will represent an increasingly relevant and consequential area for future investigation.
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