Machine gaze in online behavioral targeting: The effects of algorithmic human likeness on social presence and social influence

Existing theories and research in human-machine communication (HMC) suggest that humans tend to mindlessly anthropomorphize the media technologies they interact with, that is, to attribute humans’ mental capacities and states to technologies (Epley et al., 2007; Kim & Sundar, 2012), even when the technologies have no humanlike looks (e. g., computers and websites). Such a tendency of anthropomorphism has been found to facilitate the experience of social presence during HMC, that is, to experience the technologies as intelligent, humanlike beings (Lee, 2004; Lombard & Xu, 2021), which is often linked to greater social influence by the technologies (Blascovich, 2002). Accordingly, in OBT contexts, a similar chain of responses can be expected such that when consumers are analyzed by the OBT algorithms and receiving personalized messages such as advertisements (ads) or recommendations, they may perceive the OBT algorithms’ gaze through the lens of anthropomorphism and experience social presence—to perceive that they are gazed at by an intelligent being who makes inferences about who they are and pick items they might like.