Are people polite to computers? Responses to computer-based interviewing systems

The present studies were designed to test whether people are "'polite" to c omputers. Among people, an interviewer who directly asks about him- or hers elf will receive more positive and less varied responses than if the same q uestion is posed by a third party. Two studies were designed to determine i f the same phenomenon occurs in human-computer interaction. In the first st udy (N = 30), participants performed a task with a text-based computer and were then interviewed about the performance of that computer on 1 Df 3 loci : (a) the same computer, (b) a paper-and-pencil questionnaire, or (c) a dif ferent (but identical) text-based computer. Consistent with the politeness prediction, same-computer participants evaluated the computer more positive ly and more homogeneously than did either paper-and-pencil or different-com puter participants. Study 2 (N = 30) replicated the results with voice-base d computers. Implications for computer-based interviewing are discussed.