AI shifts cultural styles in professional email writing
AI-Generated Email Drafts Shift Culturally Distinctive Communication Styles in Professional Email
Human-Computer Interaction
Summary
People from different cultures write emails in different ways—some are direct, like in the US, while others are more polite and indirect, like in Japan. This paper shows that when people use AI to help write emails, the AI’s style can shift how they write. For example, Japanese users became more direct when using an AI trained on American styles, and Americans became more polite with a Japanese-style AI. The authors suggest that AI tools should adapt better to the user's cultural style to avoid changing how people communicate.
What this means in practice
- •For email client developers: Design AI email drafting tools that adapt to users’ cultural communication styles to preserve natural writing norms.$Commercial implications: Enables culturally adaptive email assistants for global users, improving user satisfaction and reducing communication mismatches.
- •For corporate communication trainers: Incorporate findings on AI’s influence to train employees to maintain appropriate cultural tone when using AI email tools.
Authors
Shintaro Sakai, Alice Gao, Yuichi Shoda, Katharina Reinecke
Abstract
AI assistants that support email composition may shift cultural communication norms, such as the directness typical of low-context cultures like the US versus the indirectness and contextual sensitivity central to high-context cultures like Japan. Yet it remains unknown to what extent people adopt and edit AI drafts inconsistent with their cultural communication norms. We address this through a preregistered within-subject experiment in which Japanese and American participants wrote workplace emails in their native language without AI, with a low-context AI, and with a high-context AI. We found that Japanese participants wrote emails with significantly more high-context markers (politeness, apologies) than Americans. But AI drafts shifted participants' emails toward the draft's style, with larger shifts when the draft was culturally misaligned: Japanese drifted most under low-context drafts, Americans most under high-context drafts. These findings suggest AI drafts risk overwriting cultural communication norms unless they adapt to users' communication styles.