Sourceoftruth
#SOT-COMP-3011|TEMPORAL PERCEPTION
criticalpeer-reviewed

Response latencies under 200ms trigger anthropomorphic projection in 82% of users.

Empirical Translation & Finding

Sub-200ms streaming responses confuse human turn-taking thresholds. Participants who experienced instantaneous feedback consistently personified the machine, projecting intent, agency, and empathy onto system statements. Increasing latency to 600ms recalibrated trust to object-level baselines.

Research Provenance

Watanabe, Y., & Schmidt, M. (2026)

View Original Scholarly Paper
Recorded Empirical Metric

82% anthropomorphic projection

Actionable Interface Verdict

Introduce artificial delays of at least 400ms for conversational flows to maintain tool-like mental models.