Who is the Expert? Reconciling Algorithm Aversion and Algorithm Appreciation in AI-Supported Decision Making

Abstract

The increased use of algorithms to support decision making raises questions about whether people prefer algorithmic or human input when making decisions. Two streams of research on algorithm aversion and algorithm appreciation have yielded contradicting results. Our work attempts to reconcile these contradictory findings by focusing on the framings of humans and algorithms as a mechanism. In three decision making experiments, we created an algorithm appreciation result (Experiment 1) as well as an algorithm aversion result (Experiment 2) by manipulating only the description of the human agent and the algorithmic agent, and we demonstrated how different choices of framings can lead to inconsistent outcomes in previous studies (Experiment 3). We also showed that these results were mediated by the agent's perceived competence, i.e., expert power. The results provide insights into the divergence of the algorithm aversion and algorithm appreciation literature. We hope to shift the attention from these two contradicting phenomena to how we can better design the framing of algorithms. We also call the attention of the community to the theory of power sources, as it is a systemic framework that can open up new possibilities for designing algorithmic decision support systems.