Machine heuristic: When we trust computers more than humans with our personal information

S. Shyam Sundar, Jinyoung Kim

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

170 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this day and age of identity theft, are we likely to trust machines more than humans for handling our personal information? We answer this question by invoking the concept of “machine heuristic,” which is a rule of thumb that machines are more secure and trustworthy than humans. In an experiment (N = 160) that involved making airline reservations, users were more likely to reveal their credit card information to a machine agent than a human agent. We demonstrate that cues on the interface trigger the machine heuristic by showing that those with higher cognitive accessibility of the heuristic (i.e., stronger prior belief in the rule of thumb) were more likely than those with lower accessibility to disclose to a machine, but they did not differ in their disclosure to a human. These findings have implications for design of interface cues conveying machine vs. human sources of our online interactions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCHI 2019 - Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)9781450359702
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2 2019
Event2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2019 - Glasgow, United Kingdom
Duration: May 4 2019May 9 2019

Publication series

NameConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Conference

Conference2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityGlasgow
Period5/4/195/9/19

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design

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