Trust towards Human vs. Automated Agents: Using a Multidimensional Trust Questionnaire to Assess The Role of Performance, Utility, Purpose, and Transparency

In various domains, humans are supported by automated systems. Earlier research has suggested that trust in automated agents differs from trust in other humans. The present studies aimed at taking a multi-dimensional look at effects on trust towards automation and humans. To this end, we conducted two studies to empirically validate a multi-dimensional trust questionnaire to assess performance, utility, purpose, and transparency subdimensions of trust (Study 1, N = 160) and to study experimental effects of support agent (i.e., human vs. decision support system) and failure experience (i.e., none vs. one; Study 2, N = 181). The expected factor structure was confirmed. Moreover, the results showed that being supported by a human mostly impacted the performance subscale. In sum, the findings illustrate the importance to study trust not only uni-dimensionally but to consider different subdimensions, particularly as a single-item trust measurement was mostly correlated to performance and utility subscales.