Abstract
This paper explores whether generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) and depression have any effect on an individual’s explicit general propensity to trust automated systems (trust that is unspecific to any one automated system) and whether those that do have these disorders have an implicit bias towards automated systems over other humans. The human-automated system literature to date has discovered that individual differences in humans, such as self-confidence, mood, and personality types, can influence the human-automated system relationship through human trust and reliance attitudes and behaviour. However, whether suffering from a mental disorder influences an individual’s attitudes towards automated systems generally is yet to be explored. In this study, 184 UK university students responded to online experiments between December 2019 – January 2020 and were subjected to the cultural trust instrument survey and the implicit association test in a between-subjects design to measure their general propensity to trust and implicit association towards automated systems respectively. A two-way ANOVA was performed to evaluate GAD $\times $ depression interaction effects on the dependent variables. Results suggest there was a significant interaction between GAD and depression regarding propensity to trust automated systems but they have little to no influential effect on mean implicit association test scores. Furthermore, those without depression showed a significantly higher trust score when they also had GAD. It can be concluded that GAD and depression have potential critical influence over human-automated system trust, thus creating potential issues with misuse and disuse and must be accounted for in automated system design.
Highlights
Technology is increasingly becoming more integrated into daily life for all citizens and workers so people are increasingly required to co-exist with automated systems (AS) growing in their reach and capabilities
The purpose of the present paper is to examine the influence of common mental disorders (CMDs) generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) and depression on general trust in AS in order to provide this context to future research
Given an expected mean prevalence rate of 29% for depression [56] and expected mean prevalence rate of 23.37%1 for GAD, the chi-square goodnessof-fit tests indicated that depression and GAD prevalence in the present study was as expected and not statistically significantly different (χ2(1) =.011, p =.917 and χ2(1) =.057, p =.811 respectively)
Summary
Technology is increasingly becoming more integrated into daily life for all citizens (e.g. self-driving cars, mobile phones, GPS, traffic light systems etc.) and workers (e.g. automated decision support systems such as automated weapon detectors in airport security, manufacturing machines, and warehouse transport robotics etc.) so people are increasingly required to co-exist with automated systems (AS) growing in their reach and capabilities. An individual may be indifferent to AS that they find in their mobile phone, but distrust handing over control to an autonomous vehicle Separately they will have a single propensity to trust in AS level that is relevant to both of these scenarios. An individual’s general trust, based upon their implicit and explicit general knowledge and assumptions, is a stable human trait to trust in a significant subject independent of and often before other environmental influences come into effect [15] It subsequently informs their specific trust alongside other contextual factors and their reliance strategy they take into their interaction relationship with an AS. The purpose of the present paper is to examine the influence of CMDs GAD and depression on general trust in AS in order to provide this context to future research
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