Dialing in to Digital Disruption: Can Instructions Ward Off Technology-Based Fluency Biases?

Abstract

Previous fluency research has demonstrated that when messages are heard in degraded audio quality, the speaker and the content they are communicating are judged more negatively than when heard in high quality. Using a virtual court paradigm, we investigated the efficacy of two different instructions to reduce the technology-based bias—highlighting (1) the source responsible for audio quality (Experiment 1) and (2) variations in audio quality (Experiment 2). Results converged in showing that when instructions were provided prior to listening to recordings, people continued to evaluate speakers presented in low quality more negatively than those in high quality. However, results from Experiment 2 suggested that instructions provided after recordings may be effective and warrant further investigation. Given the digital divide and disproportionate impact of digital disruptions, these findings raise concerns about equity in high stakes environments such as remote justice.