The aim of the current study was to investigate if the phenomenon of group polarization could be observed in trust in technology. In this study, 24 participants worked as two-person teams and multi-tasked in a computerized environment under varied difficulty and technology reliability levels. The participants provided trust in technology ratings individually before discussion and ratings on the team level after discussion. The results indicated that group discussion made team trust in technology more extreme than the average individual trust in technology before the discussion. Teams working with reliable technology showed a higher trust in technology rating after discussion, indicating a “risk shift” effect of group polarization. These results show that group polarization should be considered in trust calibration.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BisantzA. M.SeongY. (2001). Assessment of operator trust in and utilization of automated decision-aids under different framing conditions. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 28(2), 85-97.
2.
ComstockJ. R.ArnegardR. J. (1992). The multiattribute task battery for human operator workload and strategic behavior research (Technical Memorandum No. 104174). Hampton, VA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
3.
CooperJ.KellyK. A.WeaverK. (2001). Attitudes, Norms, and Social Groups. In HoggM. A.TindaleR. S. (Eds.), Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Group Processes (pp. 259282). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc.
4.
FoggB. J. (2003). Prominence-interpretation theory: Explaining how people assess credibility online. CHI’03 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, 722-723.
5.
InbarO.TractinskyN. (2012). Lowering the line of visibility: incidental users in service encounters. Behaviour & Information Technology, 31(3), 245-260.
6.
IsenbergD. J. (1986). Group polarization: A critical review and meta-analysis. Journal of personality and social psychology, 50(6), 1141.
7.
JianJ.BisantzA.DruryC. (2000). Foundations for an empirically determined scale of trust in automated systems. International Journal of Cognitive Ergonomics, 4(1), 53-71.
8.
KimJ.MoonJ. Y. (1998). Designing towards emotional usability in customer interfaces— trustworthiness of cyber-banking system interfaces. Interacting with Computers, 10(1), 1-29.
9.
LeeJ. D.MorayN. (1992). Trust, control strategies and allocation of function in human-machine systems. Ergonomics, 35(10), 1243-1270.
10.
LeeJ. D.SeeK. A. (2004). Trust in Automation: Designing for Appropriate Reliance. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 46, 50-80.
11.
LewandowskyS.MundyM.TanG. (2000). The dynamics of trust: Comparing humans to automation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 6(2), 104.
12.
MadhavanP.WiegmannD. A.LacsonF. C. (2006). Automation failures on tasks easily performed by operators undermine trust in automated aids. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 48(2), 241-256.
13.
MerrittS. M.IlgenD. R. (2008). Not All Trust Is Created Equal: Dispositional and History-Based Trust in Human-Automation Interactions. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 50(2), 194-210.
14.
MontagueE.LeeJ. D. (2012). Trust in Health Technologies. In CarayonP. (Ed.), Handbook of human factors and ergonomics in health care and patient safety (2nd ed., pp. 281-292). New York, NY: CRC Press.
15.
MontagueE.XuJ. (2012). Understanding active and passive users: The effects of an active user using normal, hard and unreliable technologies on user assessment of trust in technology and co-user. Applied Ergonomics, 43(4), 702-712.
16.
MoscoviciS.ZavalloniM. (1969). The group as a polarizer of attitudes. Journal of personality and social psychology, 12(2), 125.
17.
MuirB. M. (1994). Trust in automation: Part I. Theoretical issues in the study of trust and human intervention in automated systems. Ergonomics, 37(11), 1905-1922.
18.
MyersD. G.LammH. (1976). The group polarization phenomenon. Psychological Bulletin, 83(4), 602.
19.
ParasuramanR.MillerC. A. (2004). Trust and etiquette in high-criticality automated systems. Communications of the ACM, 47(4), 51-55.
20.
PruittD. G. (1971). Choice shifts in group discussion: An introductory review. Journal of personality and social psychology, 20(3), 339.
21.
SanchezJ.FiskA. D.RogersW. A. (2004). Reliability and age-related effects on trust and reliance of a decision support aid. In Proceedings of the 48th Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting.
22.
StonerJ. A. (1961). A comparison of individual and group decision involving risk. Unpublished Unpublished master’s thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
23.
StonerJ. A. (1968). Risky and cautious shifts in group decisions: The influence of widely held values. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 4(4), 442-459.
24.
SunsteinC. R. (2002). The law of group polarization. Journal of political philosophy, 10(2), 175-195.
25.
Van SwolL. M. (2009). Extreme members and group polarization. Social Influence, 4(3), 185-199.
