Mental Health, Trust, and Robots: Towards Understanding How Mental Health Mediates Human-Automated System Trust and Reliance

Abstract

This paper proposes a conceptual model derived through current ongoing research that incorporates the potential relationship that mental health may have on trust and reliance calibration in automated systems (AS). Understanding the variables involved in the human-AS interaction allows system designers to better achieve trust calibration and avoid AS misuse and disuse. However, most of the research area is saturated with understanding how external and internal (both to the human) short-term cognitive symptoms mediate this critical relationship. Therefore, the present paper extends human-AS trust literature with common mental disorders (CMDs) as outlined by the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (APMS) and incorporates them into existing models within the engineering and psychology subject areas to begin to understand what this relationship may look like. It is hoped that this paper will expand the scope of human factors (specifically human-AS trust) to include mental disorders.

Generalised Anxiety Disorder and Depression on Implicit and Explicit Trust Tendencies Toward Automated Systems

“…Despite the wider literature, these results are somewhat consistent with CMD literature that suggests that depression and GAD, being neurotic disorders, do not usually affect cognition [28] and therefore have shown limited effect on implicit attitudes which is a complex cognitive process [23], but an individual's affective processes, a key factor of trust [15], can be influenced by CMDs and their common symptoms [29], showing clear influence on propensity to trust AS.…”

“…However, GAD is unstable, similar to depression as outlined above [30]. As a result, GAD is not hypothesised as a consistent moderator of human-AS trust, even within the same individual [29].…”

“…Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and depression are both considered situational factors that may influence trust in AS [29]. This means that GAD and depression are both considered to contain non-enduring traits of an individual that may vary depending on any number of contextual, situational, or time-related reasons that may influence trusting attitudes, however this has not yet been empirically tested regarding implicit bias, general trust, or specific trust.…”