Self-driving is a technology that has been envisioned in science fiction movies or in speculative design for quite some time. However, it is one of the few future technologies that is relatively easy to imagine, but very difficult to implement it into reality due to complexity coming from variability in AI. This discrepancy between reality and imagination is what makes achieving trust in self-driving vehicles more challenging, especially regarding the fact that driving is regarded as a daily task for some people. Keeping into consideration how most of the other projects done to enhance trust in automation deals with full automation, this thesis focuses how trust can be defined in semi autonomous vehicles. This middle ground setting with humans and AI systems working together needs more factors to be considered to make it autonomous, at the same time requiring a higher level of trust from drivers. An additional layer of a takeover situation from driver to AI and vice versa in a semi-autonomous setting would require more level of trust than a full self-driving vehicle where drivers do not have to control anything.Volvo Cars, an automobile manufacturer brand that has its strong focus on safety, was collaborated with in this project to support developing a notion of trust in autonomous systems. The purpose of this collaboration with Volvo Cars was to receive support in any expert knowledge in the mobility field and to create a project that is relevant to the current development state and future vision of autonomous vehicles. In order to provide an environment where drivers can calibrate trust inside vehicles, FiDO, a tangible driving assistant for building trust, was designed through a participatory design process. FiDO provides an environment for setting mutual expectation between driver and vehicle through communicating vehicle’s status and driver’s feedback with poetic visuals. FiDO learns from driver’s behaviors and their direct feedback, which provides personalized content and autonomous driving as an outcome of learning. FiDO’s usage can be adjusted based on driver’s trust level and characteristics of the service of where automation technology is used.This thesis does not cover the entire notion of trust in automation, but focuses particularly on building trust from a driver’s point of view. With including users throughout the process, this is a proof of concept how automation technology and notion of trust can be built with driver’s participation. Although detailed technological feasibility of including both humans and AI in one place to build an autonomous system were not considered into practical levels, this thesis emphasizes how we can also establish trust voluntarily from a user’s point of view.

Trust is valuable as it plays a vital role in first impressions and decision-making. However, trust perceptions of speakers are heavily influenced by stereotypes and biases. Given how impactful eyewitness testimonies are in courtroom rulings and how often biases are used to judge speakers in courtroom settings, it is crucial to understand what factors impact perceptions of trust within this context. This is the first study to analyze the relationship between trust perception and emotion (Anger, Fear, Happy, Sad, Disgust, and Neutral) within the context of a courtroom testimony while also looking at how race, sex, vocal characteristics of the speaker, and intensity (gun-present vs. gun-absent crime) impact this interaction. Participants listened to a random sample of voices saying, "That is exactly what happened" and then responded yes or no when asked if they trusted the speaker. We found a highly significant interaction between sex and race on the proportion of voices trusted in select emotions. An in-depth analysis of voice characteristics indicated varying effects of pitch, Cepstral Peak Prominence, Vocal tract length, Subharmonic to harmonic ratio, Speech rate, Long-term Average Spectrum, and Harmonics to Noise Ratio (HNR) on perceptions of trust in male and female speakers. This experiment supports findings that heuristic cues influence the perception of trust in the courtroom. Understanding the role stereotypes and biases play in decision-making in the courtroom is vital to ensuring a fair prosecution. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)

The purpose of this study was to create a web application that provided peer to peer rental solutions for students and while doing so maximize the usability of the application with regards to simplicity and online trust. An initial market survey was conducted, see appendix B, and the overall results were promising. The few survey takers that were hesitant towards the idea thought that using a rental solution would not be worth the while. Hence the research question focused on maximizing usability in regards to simplicity and online trust in order to make the e-shop an easy rental solution to use. The application was developed in three iterations and through the development process user tests were conducted and metrics regarding simplicity and perceived online trust were collected. The test conducted made use of the concurrent think aloud procedure, retrospective probing, surveying and time data used for calculating the effectiveness and efficiency of the test participants. The test results all improved throughout the development process and the application was perceived as both simple and trustworthy by test participants. By the end of the study, an application that could provide a peer to peer rental solution that was trusted by its users and was simple to use was realized. The study concluded that the evaluation methods used were good indicators of whether a web application is simple and trustworthy by identifying issues with the application as well as the improvements reflected in the test results. However they should have been applied on separate test occasions.

The purpose of our research is to empirically test how system attributes of blockchain build trust through system and information components in blockchain food traceability systems. Findings showed that system attributes of blockchain are strong predictors of trust leading to intention to purchase. A sample of 358 responses were collected from college students through online survey. SmartPLS 3.0 is adopted for data analysis. We made contributions by building a new research model to guide future studies on trust formation in blockchain based systems as well as informing practice to adopt proven features of blockchain to create and capture values for customers.

People in society with high levels of generalized social trust and political trust are more likely to engage in civic activism and participation. Therefore, people involved in social and political groups will likely have higher levels of generalized social and political trust than the general public. What lacks in this realm of scholarship is a solid comparison of trust among people involved in social and political groups. This case-study analysis of generalized social trust and political trust among social and political groups shows the trust that is not only generated within each group, but also which types of groups are more effective at developing citizens that participate in society. Using a researcher-designed survey instrument, two social groups and two political groups have been evaluated and compared to demonstrate members' propensity to trust others in society and those in political office at all levels of government. Sample size is 115 respondents. Among other demographic data analyzed and compared to a larger population data set in the World Values Survey, six hypotheses have been tested. Typical analysis shows demographic data or group membership as the independent variable with trust values acting as the dependent variable. Graphic and cross-tabular data show that social groups recorded higher levels of political trust than political groups. This is probably due to the ideological leanings of the political groups. Political groups showed higher levels of generalized social trust than social groups. Political group members probably feel that their actions are benefiting the greater good. Additionally, participation variables showed that not only are political group members more interested in politics than social group members, but they also have higher levels of registering to vote and to participate in the voting process. They are probably seeking to make significant change in the political system through their actions. The research conducted does not seek to provide a comprehensive analysis of trust among members of social and political groups. However, it is intended to promote the analysis of trust among people in society that have a predisposition to trust as they have shown through the act of participating in a social or political group. As foci for the development of trust, analysis of social and political groups provides a shortcut for scholars interested in the development and proliferation of trust in society. This research provides analysis of four case-study groups at one point in time. Further research using larger sample sizes and time-series analysis could advance trust analysis among social and political groups.

As robots penetrate further into the everyday environments, trust in these robots becomes a crucial issue. The purpose of this work was to create and validate a reliable scale that could measure changes in an individual’s trust in a robot. Assessment of current trust theory identified measurable antecedents specific to the human, the robot, and the environment. Six experiments subsumed the development of the 40 item trust scale. Scale development included the creation of a 172 item pool. Two experiments identified the robot features and perceived functional characteristics that were related to the classification of a machine as a robot for this item pool. Item pool reduction techniques and subject matter expert (SME) content validation were used to reduce the scale to 40 items. The two final experiments were then conducted to validate the scale. The finalized 40 item pre-post interaction trust scale was designed to measure trust perceptions specific to HRI. The scale measured trust on a 0-100% rating scale and provides a percentage trust score. A 14 item sub-scale of this final version of the test recommended by SMEs may be sufficient for some HRI tasks, and the implications of this proposition were discussed.

The present work examines whether user's trust of and reliance on automation, were affected by the manipulations of user's perception of the responding agent. These manipulations included agent reliability, agent type, and failure salience. Previous work has shown that automation is not uniformly beneficial; problems can occur because operators fail to rely upon automation appropriately, by either misuse (overreliance) or disuse (underreliance). This is because operators often face difficulties in understanding how to combine their judgment with that of an automated aid. This difficulty is especially prevalent in complex tasks in which users rely heavily on automation to reduce their workload and improve task performance. However, when users rely on automation heavily they often fail to monitor the system effectively (i.e., they lose situation awareness - a form of misuse). However, if an operator realizes a system is imperfect and fails, they may subsequently lose trust in the system leading to underreliance. In the present studies, it was hypothesized that in a dual-aid environment poor reliability in one aid would impact trust and reliance levels in a companion better aid, but that this relationship is dependent upon the perceived aid type and the noticeability of the errors made. Simulations of a computer-based search-and-rescue scenario, employing uninhabited/unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) searching a commercial office building for critical signals, were used to investigate these hypotheses. Results demonstrated that participants were able to adjust their reliance and trust on automated teammates depending on the teammate's actual reliability levels. However, as hypothesized there was a biasing effect among mixed-reliability aids for trust and reliance. That is, when operators worked with two agents of mixed-reliability, their perception of how reliable and to what degree they relied on the aid was effected by the reliability of a current aid. Additionally, the magnitude and direction of how trust and reliance were biased was contingent upon agent type (i.e., 'what' the agents were: two humans, two similar robotic agents, or two dissimilar robot agents). Finally, the type of agent an operator believed they were operating with significantly impacted their temporal reliance (i.e., reliance following an automation failure). Such that, operators were less likely to agree with a recommendation from a human teammate, after that teammate had made an obvious error, than with a robotic agent that had made the same obvious error. These results demonstrate that people are able to distinguish when an agent is performing well but that there are genuine differences in how operators respond to agents of mixed or same abilities and to errors by fellow human observers or robotic teammates. The overall goal of this research was to develop a better understanding how the aforementioned factors affect users' trust in automation so that system interfaces can be designed to facilitate users' calibration of their trust in automated aids, thus leading to improved coordination of human-automation performance. These findings have significant implications to many real-world systems in which human operators monitor the recommendations of multiple other human and/or machine systems.

This study investigated the impact of diversity on the decision to trust at team formation when no history or prior relationship exists. The study consisted of two phases: 1) a selection phase and 2) a policy capturing phase. The first phase consisted of demographics, propensity to trust, and prejudice scales that were used to select participants for phase 2. The second phase consisted of a full factorial design, policy capturing study which consisted of 64 scenarios which varied the level (i.e., high and low) of 6 variables: cultural diversity, attribution, perceptions of risk, trustworthiness, third party information, and role clarity. The policy capturing study was used to identify the weights given to these variables when deciding whether or not to trust a new team member. Propensity to trust scores and prejudice ratings were used as moderators of the relationships between these 6 variables and the decision to trust. Findings showed that there was a strong moderating affect of the diversity of the simulated team member on the participant's decision to trust. However, there was no direct relationship between diversity and the decision to trust. The weight given to each variable, as well as the interaction of variables, was different based on the diversity of the new team member. Findings suggest that when forming teams, the diversity of new team members will impact what factors individuals consider in deciding to trust that other person. In addition to future research needs, the impact of these results is discussed in terms of both training and selection in teams.

In a challenge trial, “healthy volunteers are intentionally exposed to pathogens in a controlled environment, in order to promote understanding of the pathogenesis, transmission, prevention and treatment of infectious diseases in humans.” (WHO 2021, Preface). Intentional infection is an uncomfortable concept, and as a result there is a widely held belief amongst research ethics scholars and commentators that a significant ethical concern with challenge trials is their potential to negatively impact the public’s trust in the institution of medical research (Eyal 2022, 4). However, the relationship between public trust and the ethics of conducting and assessing challenge trials is complex and existing literature on the subject does not sufficiently clarify it. This paper will begin by examining the ethical permissibility of challenge trials. Once these trials are shown to be ethically permissible under particular circumstances, I will explore how concerns about the way these trials allegedly exacerbate public mistrust largely result from ambiguities in the terms ‘public’ and ‘trust’. After both terms are defined, I will formulate my own account of how public trust should apply to a risk/benefit analysis for the purpose of trial design selection called the community engagement account, which argues that trial design selection policy should focus on demonstrating trustworthiness rather than garnering trust. Because demonstrating trustworthiness requires meeting a set of known expectations, this account identifies local, specific publics as those whose expectations should be of concern when discussing public trust and trial design selection. To examine the expectations of these publics, this account defends community engagement as the measure which should be used to acquire evidence of harmful public mistrust towards the institution of science that could potentially result from conducting a challenge trial. / Thesis / Candidate in Philosophy / In a challenge trial, “healthy volunteers are intentionally exposed to [diseases] in a controlled environment,” to give researchers a better understanding of a disease in order to develop cures or preventative measures for it (WHO 2021, Preface). Many research ethics scholars believe that conducting challenge trials could negatively impact the public’s faith in the institution of medical research, but the relationship between public trust and conducting challenge trials is complex and existing literature on the subject does not sufficiently clarify it. This paper begins by exploring whether or not challenge trials can be ethically conducted. Once I show that they can be under particular circumstances, I examine how public trust concerns largely result from the fact that ‘public’ and ‘trust’ are not well defined. After defining them, I formulate my own account of how public trust should apply to a risk/benefit analysis for the purpose of trial design selection.

Thesis advisor: Raquel Muñiz / Educational leaders are being called as activists to achieve equity in schools and transform inequities through social justice initiatives. Whereas research exists in support of social justice leadership in education, research that intersects the work of current DEI leadership and the relevance of trust to pursue DEI initiatives is wanting. Trust in this context is important because relationship-building is a large component to implementing DEI work, which needs the support, buy-in, and active engagement from the entire community, requiring stakeholders' trust in the process. In this study, I take a deep dive into the role of DEI leadership by exploring the practices and perspectives that are common in the role and the work two decades into the 21st century. I conducted four semi-structured interviews with DEI leaders, during which participants reflected on many collective practices central to their daily work. These practices fell into three different categories encompassing similar characteristics: support, development, and resource. Through further analysis, I found that DEI leadership served four separate areas: families, students, adult staff, and the institution. Above all, a core practice of building relationships was found to be essential to achieving all said practices. In addition, the analysis revealed three common perspectives that impact DEI leadership work: the role is larger than a single person, the role must have trust and support from power positions, and the leader must have a deep connection with the work through experience and/or training. Finally, I found that benevolence, reliability, and openness are essential facets of trust impacting DEI work, as is the importance of time. The study’s results are valuable for the development of DEI leadership and achieving equitable access and inclusive environments in schools. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.