Exploring the Interplay Between Voice, Personality, and Gender in Human-Agent Interactions

2026-02-11

AI Summary

This study investigates how synchrony between users and voice-based agents along the dimensions of gender and personality (introversion/extraversion) influences interaction perception and relationship formation. In a controlled experiment, 388 participants evaluated four synthetic voices—generated from human recordings and systematically varied by gender and personality traits. The findings reveal that personality traits of female-voiced agents are more accurately recognized, and male users significantly perceive male-voiced agents as more similar to their own personality, an effect not observed among female users, thereby uncovering an asymmetry in gender–personality interactions. Furthermore, personality synchrony substantially enhances interaction acceptability, particularly in male user–male agent pairings. This work provides the first empirical evidence of an asymmetric mechanism through which gender and personality jointly shape human–agent interaction dynamics.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Learning Human Values and Preferences
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction
• Multiagent Systems: Agent-Based Simulation and Emergent Behavior

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions
• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems

Abstract

To foster effective human-agent interactions, designers need to identify characteristics that could affect how agents are perceived and accepted, and to what extent they could impact rapport-building. Aiming to explore the role of user-agent synchrony, we assessed 388 participants to determine whether they could perceive personality traits from four artificial voices we selected and adapted from human samples, considering gender (male or female) and personality (introvert or extrovert) as grouping factors. Our findings suggest that participants were able to significantly differentiate female agents by personality, while male agents were not consistently distinguished. We also observed evidence of personality synchrony, where participants tended to perceive the first agent as more similar to their own personality, with this effect driven mainly by male participants, especially toward male agents. This paper contributes findings and insights to consider the interplay of user-agent personality and gender synchrony in the design of human-agent interactions.

Problem

• voice
• personality
• gender
• human-agent interaction
• synchrony

Innovation

• personality synchrony
• voice perception
• gender-personality interplay
• human-agent interaction
• artificial voice design