[2603.27413] The Hidden Costs of AI-Mediated Political Outreach: Persuasion and AI Penalties in the US and UK

Computer Science > Computers and Society arXiv:2603.27413 (cs) [Submitted on 28 Mar 2026] Title:The Hidden Costs of AI-Mediated Political Outreach: Persuasion and AI Penalties in the US and UK Authors:Andreas Jungherr, Adrian Rauchfleisch View a PDF of the paper titled The Hidden Costs of AI-Mediated Political Outreach: Persuasion and AI Penalties in the US and UK, by Andreas Jungherr and Adrian Rauchfleisch View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:As AI-enabled systems become available for political campaign outreach, an important question has received little empirical attention: how do people evaluate the communicative practices these systems represent, and what consequences do those evaluations carry? Most research on AI-enabled persuasion examines attitude change under enforced exposure, leaving aside whether people regard AI-mediated outreach as legitimate or not. We address this gap with a preregistered 2x2 experiment conducted in the United States and United Kingdom (N = 1,800 per country) varying outreach intent (informational vs.~persuasive) and type of interaction partner (human vs.~AI-mediated) in the context of political issues that respondents consider highly important. We find consistent evidence for two evaluation penalties. A persuasion penalty emerges across nearly all outcomes in both countries: explicitly persuasive outreach is evaluated as less acceptable, more threatening to personal autonomy, less beneficial, and more damaging to organizational trust tha...