The Drawback of Insight: Detailed Explanations Can Reduce Agreement with XAI

TL;DR

This study reveals that detailed explanations in AI systems may decrease user agreement for certain individuals, especially those with high neuroticism and low tech comfort, suggesting personalized XAI design is beneficial.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates that user personality traits influence trust in AI explanations, highlighting the need for personalized XAI approaches based on individual differences.

Findings

Users with high neuroticism prefer AI suggestions without explanations.

Lower technological comfort correlates with higher agreement without explanations.

Personalized XAI can improve user collaboration with AI systems.

Abstract

With the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based decision-making, explanations help increase new technology adoption through enhanced trust and reliability. However, our experimental study challenges the notion that every user universally values explanations. We argue that the agreement with AI suggestions, whether accompanied by explanations or not, is influenced by individual differences in personality traits and the users' comfort with technology. We found that people with higher neuroticism and lower technological comfort showed more agreement with the recommendations without explanations. As more users become exposed to eXplainable AI (XAI) and AI-based systems, we argue that the XAI design should not provide explanations for users with high neuroticism and low technology comfort. Prioritizing user personalities in XAI systems will help users become better collaborators of AI systems.