Audio Option for User Input

Goal: Humanize users in one anothers' eyes Evidence rating (PDN): Inference Civic signal: Welcome — Encourage the humanization of others When to use: Interactive

What it is

A button that allows the users to respond to content with a recording of their own voice.

Intended impact

Reduces likelihood of showing or reporting hostility when people discuss a topic via voice memos.

Evidence that it works

Four experiments conducted by Schroeder, et al. (2017) predicted that a person’s speech, beyond conveying a person’s thoughts, also "conveys their mental capacity, such that hearing a person explain his or her beliefs makes the person seem more mentally capable—and therefore seem to possess more uniquely human mental traits—than reading the same content” (ibid).

This study ran three experiments “involving polarizing attitudinal issues and political opinions” which found “this effect to emerge when people are perceived as relatively mindless, such as when they disagree with the evaluator’s own beliefs” (ibid).

A fourth experiment found that “paralinguistic cues in the voice” (e.g., tone, echoing) were an indicator for mental capacities.

Why it matters

In an interview with Casey Newton of the Platformer, Kayvon Beykpour, Twitter’s head of product, had this to say about audio:

“Our mechanics incentivize very short-form, high-brevity conversation, which is amazing and powerful and has led to all the impact that Twitter has had in the world. But it’s a very specific type of discourse, right? It's very difficult to have long, deep, thoughtful conversations."Audio is interesting for us because the format lends itself to a different kind of behavior. When you can hear someone’s voice, you can empathize with them in a way that is just more difficult to do when a you’re in an asynchronous environment. … We think audio is powerful, because that empathy is is real and raw in a way that you can’t achieve over text in the same way.

According to Schroeder et al. (2017), modern technology allows for predominantly text-based interactions over vast distances, but that may not be optimal for cultivated mutual appreciation and understanding the minds of others. Voice, however, allows us to better build a theory of mind about others, the absence of which fuels dehumanization.

Special considerations

The television spot opens with a white man making calls to a rental office. He gives a different name and uses a different voice for each call, reflecting various races and ethnicities. Each time, he is told that the apartment is not for rent. Yet, when he uses a Caucasian-sounding name and accent, he is assured that the apartment is—for some certain reason—available.

The ad, titled "Accents", appeared on television stations across the United States. It also suggests a very real underlying problem with voice only, as it can, unfortunately, still prove to be a vector for discrimination.

Another drawback is that voice-only risks being inaccessible to the deaf and hard of hearing. However, given advancements in real-time closed captioning, this latter drawback is potentially solvable.

Citations

• *The Humanizing Voice: Speech Reveals, and Text Conceals, a More Thoughtful Mind in the Midst of Disagreement* — Juliana Schroeder, Michael Kardas, Nicholas Epley (Association for Psychological Sciences, October 25, 2017). https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617713798

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From the Prosocial Design Network's Digital Intervention Library (https://www.prosocialdesign.org/library/give-audio-option-for-user-input), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Reformatted for the RT Commons; text otherwise as published. Library citation: Prosocial Design Network (2024), Digital Intervention Library, https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/Q4RMB. Anything built from this pattern should credit the Prosocial Design Network and the researchers cited above.

Details

• goal: Humanize users in one anothers' eyes
• citations: [object Object]
• image alt: An expanded modal box, which conveys the concept of listening to a recording of someone else's voice.
• image url: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/647f696dc653a97c26f42a0b/647f696dc653a97c26f42b9d_210418_audio%402x.png
• pdn rating: Inference
• when to use: Interactive
• civic signal: Welcome
• pdn library doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/Q4RMB
• civic signal goal: Encourage the humanization of others