How Do We Gender Robots?: Inquiring the Relationship Between Perceptual Cues and Context of Use

Abstract

This paper presents a forthcoming study on the relationship between perceptual cues and context of use in the attribution of gender to a robot. We hypothesize that the context of use might drive the attribution of gender when robots have minimal gender cues. To test this hypothesis, we plan to run a 2x2 between subjects study with minimal gender cues (slightly feminine vs. slightly masculine voice) and typically gendered contexts (typically feminine vs. typically masculine) as independent variables. If our hypothesis is correct, our study will suggest that designing perceptually gender-neutral robots is not enough to make social robotics inclusive, because the context of use might still influence their genderedness.