Measuring Interpersonal Trust towards Virtual Humans with a Virtual Maze Paradigm

Measuring trust with the Wayfinding Task: Implementing a novel task in immersive virtual reality and desktop setups across remote and in-person test environments

“…As such, we are comfortable distinguishing the design of the Wayfinding Task used in the present study from implementations of the virtual maze in the work we have discussed. However, it is worth noting that Lin et al [ 69 ] did also find positive effects of trustworthiness on following and asking for advice. Future studies may continue to examine the role of different implementations of the ask-endorse paradigm in conjunction with different trust manipulations.…”

“…There have been recent implementations of a similar maze task outside of Hale et al's work which we should also briefly discuss. Work by Lin et al [69] uses a two-door design similar to Hale et al, 2018, where participants are told their objective is to escape. This is distinct from our work in developing an open-plan, city-like design to offer an interpretation of the paradigm with high ecological validity, and in terms of motivation (where our participants are told to 'explore').…”

Visual Indicators Representing Avatars' Authenticity in Social Virtual Reality and Their Impacts on Perceived Trustworthiness

“…Measuring trust in virtual agents and avatars is crucial in the evaluation and building of trust in the virtual worlds. While self-report questionnaires are commonly used in trust measurement, many validated questionnaires (such as the "Interpersonal Trust scale" (ITS) [52] and the "KUSIV3" [7]) either primarily assess participants' propensity to trust other (generalized trust) rather than trust in specific trustees (specific trust) [31], nor not suitable for virtual humans and virtual environments. In the literature of avatars, Bente et al [10,11] developed a 20-item questionnaires to measure interpersonal trust in avatar-mediated net-based collaboration.…”

“…Apart from subjective measures, behavioral measurements are increasingly gaining attention in the study of trust in virtual humans. Experimental methods such as a trust game [9,20,31] and the ask-endorse paradigm [20,31,48] were employed. Additionally, collaborative behavior [48] and mutual gaze during conversations [4] were also used as behavioral clues to investigate trust.…”

“…In the evaluation of trust, validated subjective and objective measurements (e.g., behavioral measurements) designed for social VR scenarios [31] could be developed and used to evaluate trust sufficiently.…”