Do You Trust Alexa?

It is human tendency to attribute human traits to nonhuman things. Recent years have seen an increase in research on this subject due to the steady increase in technology such as Apple’s Siri, Google’s self-driving cars, and Amazon’s Alexa that is both anthropomorphized and interactive.

Chicago Booth’s Ann L. McGill and Booth PhD candidate Hye-Young Kim say that how we respond to and whether we trust artificially humanized technology like Alexa partly depends on our financial status. Their research shows important implications that go beyond marketing, or even health care, transportation, securities, etc. where interactive technologies are being employed more every year.