Paying Attention to Trust: Exploring the Relationship Between Attention Control and Trust in Automation

Abstract

As automation continues to pervade people’s lives, it is critical to understand the reasons why some interactions are successful while others fail. Previous research attempting to explain this variability in HAI through individual differences in working memory has been mixed. Research in cognitive psychology has demonstrated the importance of attention control as a fundamental mechanism underlying higher-order cognition. In the realm of automation, early work has demonstrated a link between attention control and performance (Foroughi et al., 2019). The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the relationship between attention control and attitudes towards automation, particularly trust. Our results found attention control to be correlated with propensity to trust and negative attitudes towards robots. These results encourage further inquiry into the role of attention control in HAI.