Anger Speaks Louder? Exploring the Effects of AI Nonverbal Emotional Cues on Human Decision Certainty in Moral Dilemmas

TL;DR

This study investigates how nonverbal emotional cues from AI agents, specifically anger and sadness, influence human decision certainty in moral dilemmas, revealing that anger cues can cause decision reversals and are affected by participant gender.

Contribution

It is the first to examine the impact of nonverbal emotional cues from AI agents on human moral decision-making, highlighting gender interactions and ethical implications.

Findings

Anger cues from AI significantly cause decision reversals.

Gender interacts with emotional cues to influence perception.

Nonverbal cues can alter moral decision certainty.

Abstract

Exploring moral dilemmas allows individuals to navigate moral complexity, where a reversal in decision certainty, shifting toward the opposite of one's initial choice, could reflect open-mindedness and less rigidity. This study probes how nonverbal emotional cues from conversational agents could influence decision certainty in moral dilemmas. While existing research heavily focused on verbal aspects of human-agent interaction, we investigated the impact of agents expressing anger and sadness towards the moral situations through animated chat balloons. We compared these with a baseline where agents offered same responses without nonverbal cues. Results show that agents displaying anger significantly caused reversal shifts in decision certainty. The interaction between participant gender and agents' nonverbal emotional cues significantly affects participants' perception of AI's influence. These findings reveal that even subtly altering agents' nonverbal cues may impact human moral decisions, presenting both opportunities to leverage these effects for positive outcomes and ethical risks for future human-AI systems.