Trust in the Team as a Function of Trust in Individual Agents: Scale Validation and Modeling

Abstract

With the growing adoption of autonomous technologies across various domains, an increasing number of studies have explored collaborations between humans and agents working together to achieve shared goals, forming human-agent teams (HATs). While much of the research has focused on dyadic relationships involving a single human and a single agent, the current study examines multi-human multi-agent teams where multiple humans and agents collaborate to achieve team goals. The shift from dyadic to more complex teams makes research topics studied in triadic or larger human-human teams relevant to HATs. Of particular interest in this study is the concept of “trust in team” and its relationships with trustor and trustee characteristics. The study used an adapted version of the Blocks World for Teams (BW4T) testbed, where a team of four (two humans and two agents) performs a collaborative block-moving task. This study first validated the use of the existing interpersonal trust scale and team trust scale for evaluating trust in human/agent teammates and in the team, respectively. The next step involved examining how trust in the team is formed in relation to trust in individual teammates. Additionally, the associations between team trust, communication, and performance were investigated.