Automation is appearing in work environments as diverse as aviation, maritime operations, process control, motor vehicle operation, and information retrieval. The authors of this article define automation as technology that actively selects data, transforms information, makes decisions, or controls processes. The authors contend that automation is often problematic because people fail to rely upon it appropriately. In particular, trust guides reliance when complexity and unanticipated situations make a complete understanding of the automation impractical. In this article, the authors provide a review that considers trust from the organizational, sociological, interpersonal, psychological, and neurological perspectives. They introduce a conceptual model that integrates research regarding trust in automation and that describes the dynamics of trust, the role of context, and the influence of display characteristics. The authors conclude by reiterating the role of emotional responses, including trust, to technology.
Abstract