What might matter in autonomous cars adoption: first person versus third person scenarios

TL;DR

This study investigates how psychological, gender, and framing factors influence public preferences on autonomous cars, finding third person scenarios reduce bias and emphasizing the importance of communication framing in ethical debates.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence that third person scenarios are less biased than first person ones in autonomous car ethics discussions and highlights the role of gender and framing factors.

Findings

Third person scenarios are less biased than first person scenarios.

Gender bias influences preferences and warrants further study.

Framing and linguistic aspects significantly impact ethical debates.

Abstract

The discussion between the automotive industry, governments, ethicists, policy makers and general public about autonomous cars' moral agency is widening, and therefore we see the need to bring more insight into what meta-factors might actually influence the outcomes of such discussions, surveys and plebiscites. In our study, we focus on the psychological (personality traits), practical (active driving experience), gender and rhetoric/framing factors that might impact and even determine respondents' a priori preferences of autonomous cars' operation. We conducted an online survey (N=430) to collect data that show that the third person scenario is less biased than the first person scenario when presenting ethical dilemma related to autonomous cars. According to our analysis, gender bias should be explored in more extensive future studies as well. We recommend any participatory technology assessment discourse to use the third person scenario and to direct attention to the way any autonomous car related debate is introduced, especially in terms of linguistic and communication aspects and gender.