"Thank You, Siri": Politeness and Intelligent Digital Assistants Completed Research

Interactions with intelligent digital assistants like Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Google's Google Assistant can often be direct and terse, which is leading many to worry that users' uncivility towards digital assistants is causing users to become ruder in their human interactions. Although digital assistants are nearing ubiquity, not much is known about how interactions with this form of artificial intelligence may negatively impact human social behaviors. Practice-oriented researchers have started initial explorations into the effects of interaction with digital assistants from a social psychology perspective, and academics have pursued similar questions within the paradigm of current human-computer interaction research. However, neither party has addressed the psychological impact of the common practice of barking orders to our digital assistants instead of asking politely. Consequently, as an initial step towards better understanding this problem, we surveyed and observed 274 people to measure their general politeness and politeness towards digital assistants.