Passing the Buck to AI: How Individuals' Decision-Making Patterns Affect Reliance on AI

TL;DR

This study explores how individual decision-making styles influence reliance on AI, revealing that buckpassing increases AI dependence while vigilance promotes careful scrutiny of AI explanations.

Contribution

It introduces the link between decision-making patterns and AI reliance, highlighting individual differences in AI-assisted decision-making.

Findings

Higher buckpassing correlates with increased AI reliance and seeking.

Vigilance correlates with more thorough examination of AI explanations.

Decision-making style significantly influences AI adoption behaviors.

Abstract

Psychological research has identified different patterns individuals have while making decisions, such as vigilance (making decisions after thorough information gathering), hypervigilance (rushed and anxious decision-making), and buckpassing (deferring decisions to others). We examine whether these decision-making patterns shape peoples' likelihood of seeking out or relying on AI. In an online experiment with 810 participants tasked with distinguishing food facts from myths, we found that a higher buckpassing tendency was positively correlated with both seeking out and relying on AI suggestions, while being negatively correlated with the time spent reading AI explanations. In contrast, the higher a participant tended towards vigilance, the more carefully they scrutinized the AI's information, as indicated by an increased time spent looking through the AI's explanations. These findings suggest that a person's decision-making pattern plays a significant role in their adoption and reliance on AI, which provides a new understanding of individual differences in AI-assisted decision-making.