Human or Machine? How Much Difference in Understanding and Trust Does a Human Element Make in Storm Forecasts?

Abstract

The past two Atlantic hurricane seasons have been among the most active in history. In the hurricane-prone southeast, broadcast meteorologists and emergency managers want their communities to both understand and trust the severe weather alerts they send out. This study examined how college students, a vulnerable population, view those messages. Results show students believed they understood, and actually did understand, messages with both human and graphics more than human only or graphics only. The human-graphics combination was also the most trusted of the three options. These findings suggest that not only is the human element important in emergency messages but students are also seeking out local television and meteorologists for their weather information more than the internet.

Exploring the effect of automation failure on the human’s trustworthiness in human-agent teamwork

“…Human-human relationships are conceived differently from human-automation relationships, where an assessment of trust/distrust seems to be dependent on different factors, see, e.g., ( Jian et al, 2000 ; Alarcon et al, 2023 ; Eicher et al, 2023 ; Zhang et al, 2023 ). Benevolence, for example, is about interpersonal relationships, meaning it might not develop in human-automation relationships the same way it does for human-human relationships ( Centeio Jorge et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Trust, however, is not a simple concept. Literature has focused on exploring trust in human-automation teams, particularly looking into the differences between human-human and human-automation trust ( Alarcon et al, 2023 ; Eicher et al, 2023 ; Zhang et al, 2023 ), how this trust can be optimised ( Lee and See, 2004 ; Groom and Nass, 2007 ; Webber, 2008 ; Knocton et al, 2023 ), and which factors reduce trust ( Falcone and Castelfranchi, 2004 ; Madhavan et al, 2006 ; Kopp et al, 2023 ). In particular, automation failure has a significant impact on a person’s trust, i.e., a person that is interacting with the imperfectly reliable has a significantly lower level of trust in it in subsequent interactions ( Robinette et al, 2017 ).…”