AI Teammates, Gender, and Human-AI Collaboration: A Social Perception Perspective

Abstract

Although Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly embedded into teams, how employees perceive and collaborate with “AI teammates,” especially gendered AI teammates, remains an urgent but underexplored question. This research integrates social perception and social role theories to investigate how employees cognitively differentiate AI from human teammates, and how these perceptions consequently shape employee-AI cooperation. We conducted three studies: two online experiments in China (N1 = 163, N2 = 465) and one pre-registered field survey in the U.S. (N3 = 155). Our results revealed a distinct perception of employees, in which they viewed AI teammates as more competent but less warm than human teammates. This competence advantage of AI enhanced employee cooperation with AI, while its perceived lack of warmth hindered cooperation. Assigning AI a female gender compensated for this warmth deficit (Study 1), but simultaneously diminished AI’s competence advantage over humans (Studies 2 and 3). Conversely, assigning AI a male gender amplified AI’s competence advantage (Studies 2 and 3), but exacerbated its absence of warmth (Study 1). Finally, these gendered perceptions of AI influenced employee-AI cooperation in paradoxical ways. Overall, our research underscores that incorporating AI, especially gendered AI, might be a mixed blessing for collaboration within human-AI hybrid teams.

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