Neural Correlates of Trust in Automation: Considerations and Generalizability Between Technology Domains

Abstract

Investigations into physiological or neurological correlates of trust has increased in popularity due to the need for a continuous measure of trust, including for trust-sensitive or adaptive systems, measurements of trustworthiness or pain points of technology, or for human-in-the-loop cyber intrusion detection. Understanding the limitations and generalizability of the physiological responses between technology domains is important as the usefulness and relevance of results is impacted by fundamental characteristics of the technology domains, corresponding use cases, and socially acceptable behaviors of the technologies. While investigations into the neural correlates of trust in automation has grown in popularity, there is limited understanding of the neural correlates of trust, where the vast majority of current investigations are in cyber or decision aid technologies. Thus, the relevance of these correlates as a deployable measure for other domains and the robustness of the measures to varying use cases is unknown. As such, this manuscript discusses the current-state-of-knowledge in trust perceptions, factors that influence trust, and corresponding neural correlates of trust as generalizable between domains.

Keywords: gender difference; human-robot interaction; interpersonal trust; reliability; vehicle automation.