What goes beyond sex? Unravelling why men hold more favourable attitudes toward human-level AI in the workplace

A growing body of evidence suggests sex-based differences in attitudes toward Artificial Intelligence (AI), including transformative AI approaching human-level capabilities. This research is among the first to examine attitudes toward the workplace integration of human-level AI, investigating whether sex differences extend to this context and the factors underlying them, focusing on biological sex, personality traits, gender role orientations, and affective responses. Across three studies, women reported less favourable attitudes. Study 1 (N = 1,362) showed that this effect persisted after controlling for personality traits that typically differ by sex, namely agreeableness and neuroticism. Study 2 (N = 617) replicated and extended these findings using alternative personality measures while accounting for age and workplace digitalisation. Study 3 (N = 674) demonstrated that both positive and negative affective responses mediated the relationship between sex and attitudes. Moreover, the indirect effect via positive affect was moderated by feminine gender-role orientation, with sex differences attenuated at lower levels of femininity. These findings suggest that attitudes toward human-level AI are shaped not only by biological sex but also by psychological and social gender-related factors, offering theoretical and practical insights for system design and organisational interventions to reduce sex-based disparities in human-level AI adoption.