Submission 176
Communicative AI as Extended Mind: Relationships Between AI Perception and Cognitive Self-Esteem
SymposiumTalk-05
Presented by: Sonja Utz
Prior research has shown that people mistakenly regard the Internet’s knowledge as their own and report higher cognitive self-esteem after using Google to answer questions than without using Google. Experimental work showed that this effect does, however, not occur when people interact with a chatbot. Building on this, we examine whether this effect is only short-lived or occurs in the field among regular users of communicative AIs (ComAIs) like ChatGPT or Alexa. More importantly, we examine the impact of people’s perception of ComAI as tool vs. social actor and their usage modality (text, voice). Using data from a six-wave longitudinal study among active ComAI users, we tested the following hypotheses:
H1: People who perceive communicative AI as a social actor show lower cognitive self- esteem than people who perceive AI as a tool.
H2: The effect postulated in H1 is stronger the more people interact with the AI via voice.
H3: People who perceive AI as social actor (vs. tool) at time t1, show lower cognitive self-esteem at time t+1.
No significant effect of perception (tool vs. actor) on cognitive self-esteem, and no interaction with modality emerged. In some waves, a modality effect occurred: people who used ComAI via voice and text reported the highest cognitive self-esteem.