In the current era, interacting with Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an everyday activity. Understanding the interaction between humans and AI is of potential value because, in future, such interactions are expected to become more pervasive. Two studies—one survey and one experiment—were conducted to demonstrate positive effects of anthropomorphism on interactions with smart-speaker-based AI assistants and to examine the mediating role of psychological distance in this relationship. The results of Study 1, an online survey, showed that participants with a higher tendency to anthropomorphize their AI assistant/s evaluated it/them more positively, and this effect was mediated by psychological distance. In Study 2, the hypotheses were tested in a more sophisticated experiment. Again, the results indicated that, in the high-anthropomorphism (vs. low-anthropomorphism) condition, participants had more positive attitudes toward the AI assistant, and the effect was mediated by psychological distance. Though several studies have demonstrated the effect of anthropomorphism, few have probed the underlying mechanism of anthropomorphism thoroughly. The current research not only contributes to the anthropomorphism literature, but also provides direction to research on facilitating human–AI interaction.

在当前时代，与人工智能（AI）交互已成为日常活动。理解人类与AI之间的相互作用具有潜在的价值，因为在将来，这种相互作用有望变得更加普遍。进行了两项研究（一项调查和一项实验），以证明拟人化对与基于智能扬声器的AI助手互动的积极影响，并检验心理距离在这种关系中的中介作用。在线调查研究1的结果表明，具有较高的拟人化AI助手拟人化程度的参与者对其进行了更积极的评估，并且这种影响是由心理距离来介导的。在研究2中，假设是在更复杂的实验中进行检验的。同样，结果表明，在高拟人化（相对于低拟人化）条件下，参与者对AI助手的态度更加积极，其效果是由心理距离来介导的。尽管有几项研究证明了拟人化的作用，但很少有深入探讨拟人化的潜在机制。目前的研究不仅为拟人化文献做出了贡献，而且为促进人与人工智能的相互作用提供了方向。