TY  - JOUR
A1  - Obremski, David
A1  - Friedrich, Paula
A1  - Haak, Nora
A1  - Schaper, Philipp
A1  - Lugrin, Birgit
T1  - The impact of mixed-cultural speech on the stereotypical perception of a virtual robot
JF  - Frontiers in Robotics and AI
N2  - Despite the fact that mixed-cultural backgrounds become of increasing importance in our daily life, the representation of multiple cultural backgrounds in one entity is still rare in socially interactive agents (SIAs). This paper’s contribution is twofold. First, it provides a survey of research on mixed-cultured SIAs. Second, it presents a study investigating how mixed-cultural speech (in this case, non-native accent) influences how a virtual robot is perceived in terms of personality, warmth, competence and credibility. Participants with English or German respectively as their first language watched a video of a virtual robot speaking in either standard English or German-accented English. It was expected that the German-accented speech would be rated more positively by native German participants as well as elicit the German stereotypes credibility and conscientiousness for both German and English participants. Contrary to the expectations, German participants rated the virtual robot lower in terms of competence and credibility when it spoke with a German accent, whereas English participants perceived the virtual robot with a German accent as more credible compared to the version without an accent. Both the native English and native German listeners classified the virtual robot with a German accent as significantly more neurotic than the virtual robot speaking standard English. This work shows that by solely implementing a non-native accent in a virtual robot, stereotypes are partly transferred. It also shows that the implementation of a non-native accent leads to differences in the perception of the virtual robot.
KW  - non-native accent
KW  - social robotics
KW  - intelligent virtual agents
KW  - stereotypes
KW  - mixed-cultural
KW  - culturally aware
KW  - socially interactive agents
Y1  - 2022
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-293531
SN  - 2296-9144
VL  - 9
ER  -