The role of age and anthropomorphism in perceptions of good digital teammates

The role of age in technology use is often examined in the context of applied gerontology (e.g., Czaja, 2021) or treated as a continuous variable to be controlled; however, age has been shown to have a reliable effect on perceptions of technology in large number of studies (Schaefer et al., 2016). The present study examined the extent to which age is associated with perceptions of good human and device teammates using latent factor analyses of responses to a large-scale survey. Results indicate that perceptions of good characteristics of technology, but not human, teammates change with age, particularly for aspects related to objective task performance and interpersonal communication. We demonstrate that these relationships are related to factors such as individual differences in anthropomorphism across the lifespan. These results underscore the importance of accounting for individual differences in perceptions of technology related to age.