If machines outperform humans: status threat evoked by and willingness to interact with sophisticated machines in a work-related context

The use of sophisticated machines at the workplace – e.g. robots equipped with artificial intelligence – is on the rise. Since humans tend to experience a threat to human uniqueness in response to machines with human-like mental capabilities, I explored whether the same holds true for status threat, a well-researched variable in the interpersonal workplace literature. Across two experiments (N1 = 104, N2 = 589), humans felt higher status threat towards a robot (Experiment 1, laboratory study) and an artificial intelligence (Experiment 2, online study) that outperformed a human in verbal-creative tasks, requiring agency and experience to solve. Contrary to results from human-human literature, higher status threat was linked with higher willingness to interact with the machine, which I trace back to its high perceived usefulness. I further interpret my findings as a hint that humans are open to using modern-day technology if they assume to benefit from the advantages the technology brings to their own work and therefore accept the feeling of status threat at the same time.