Toward quantifying trust dynamics: How people adjust their trust after moment-to-moment interaction with automation

TL;DR

This study investigates how human operators dynamically adjust their trust in automation during real-time interactions, influenced by biases and outcomes, which can inform the design of adaptive automation systems.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on the moment-to-moment trust adjustments influenced by biases and outcomes during interaction with automation.

Findings

Outcome bias and contrast effect influence trust adjustments.

Automation failures cause larger trust decrements than successes.

Trust can increase after automation failure if the user fails the task.

Abstract

Objective: We examine how human operators adjust their trust in automation as a result of their moment-to-moment interaction with automation. Background: Most existing studies measured trust by administering questionnaires at the end of an experiment. Only a limited number of studies viewed trust as a dynamic variable that can strengthen or decay over time. Method: Seventy-five participants took part in an aided memory recognition task. In the task, participants viewed a series of images and later on performed 40 trials of the recognition task to identify a target image when it was presented with a distractor. In each trial, participants performed the initial recognition by themselves, received a recommendation from an automated decision aid, and performed the final recognition. After each trial, participants reported their trust on a visual analog scale. Results: Outcome bias and contrast effect significantly influence human operators' trust adjustments. An automation failure leads to a larger trust decrement if the final outcome is undesirable, and a marginally larger trust decrement if the human operator succeeds the task by him-/her-self. An automation success engenders a greater trust increment if the human operator fails the task. Additionally, automation failures have a larger effect on trust adjustment than automation successes. Conclusion: Human operators adjust their trust in automation as a result of their moment-to-moment interaction with automation. Their trust adjustments are significantly influenced by decision-making heuristics/biases. Application: Understanding the trust adjustment process enables accurate prediction of the operators' moment-to-moment trust in automation and informs the design of trust-aware adaptive automation.