Manipulating users' trust of autonomous products with affective priming

Ting Liao, Erin F. MacDonald

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    7 Scopus citations

    Abstract

    Autonomous products, which perform many functions on their own with limited user input, require users to exhibit trust at an appropriate level before use. Research in product trust has thus far focused on the product characteristics: such as manipulating the product's design-for example, anthropomorphizing an autonomous vehicle-and measuring changes in the users' trust. This study flips the usual approach and instead manipulates users' mental state through priming, and then measures users' trust to an existing autonomous product, the Amazon Echo. In this study, we used visual stimuli (images) that evoked either positive or negative emotions as affective primes to influence users' trust before interacting with the Echo. While interacting with the Echo, users evaluated its performance and how well it met their expectations. Holistically, users' perceived performance of the Echo and age had significant effects on their trust of the product, but the affective primes showed no significant effect. However, for the subgroup of participants whose expectations of the product's performance were met: those who received either positive or negative prime were more likely to trust the product than those who saw neutral images; men were more likely to trust the product than others. The study demonstrates the importance of meeting users' expectations and highlights the potential to build trust by inducing emotions contextually.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number051402
    JournalJournal of Mechanical Design
    Volume143
    Issue number5
    DOIs
    StatePublished - May 2021

    Keywords

    • Design methodology
    • Design theory and methodology
    • Product design
    • User-centered design

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Manipulating users' trust of autonomous products with affective priming'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this