The robot won’t look at you: Anticipatory face loss in unethical consumer behavior toward artificial intelligence

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has increasingly become a social agent in consumers’ lives. However, unethical consumer behavior is rising in consumer-AI interactions, leading to unintended consequences for companies that deploy AI agents. To identify the psychological mechanism underlying this unethical consumer behavior, we draw upon face theory to propose that consumers experience less anticipatory face loss when engaging in unethical behavior toward AI agents than toward human agents. Across one field experiment and five scenario–based experiments, we find that unethical consumer behavior increases in consumer-AI interactions due to lower anticipatory face loss. Importantly, this effect weakens when AI agents are perceived as competent or exhibit eye gaze cues. The findings provide a more comprehensive understanding of unethical consumer behavior in consumer-AI interactions and offer practicalguidelines for preventing the misuse of AI.