The effect of anthropomorphized technology failure on the desire to connect with others

Extant work suggests that unsuccessful human-technology interactions can elicit negative affective reactions, prompting users to engage in compensatory behavior including seeking affiliation with others. The current work presents one mechanism to explain these findings. Specifically, we propose that users may construe incidents of technology failure akin to incidents of social rejection: Across three studies, we demonstrate that when an anthropomorphized (vs. nonanthropomorphized) technology fails to function as expected, users experience feelings of rejection, and subsequently express a greater desire to connect with others. In doing so, we contribute to extant research on human-technology interactions by uniquely demonstrating that feelings of social rejection may arise from technology failure. Our work also deepens our understanding of the unintended negative consequences of product anthropomorphism and, as such, provides insight into technology design.