Date of Award

Fall 2010

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

Program/Concentration

Experimental Psychology

Committee Director

Poomima Madhavan

Committee Member

Barbara A. Winstead

Committee Member

Ivan Ash

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.P68 B74 2010

Abstract

This study examined the degree to which emotions and/or rational thinking should be emphasized to improve performance in target detection in complex tasks. Specifically, we evaluated the dual-process model of decision making to determine whether emotion or cognition (or a combination of the two) is more powerful in influencing decisions. Additionally, we considered how decisions are influenced with the addition of an automated agent to assist human decision making. Participants (n = 120) were randomly assigned to one of three framing manipulations, each with positive and negative incentives: the analytical frame emphasized numerical gains or losses; the affective frame presented gains and losses as "lives saved" and "lives lost"; the comparative frame emphasized better or worse performance relative to one's peers. Performance was assessed both with and without the assistance of an automated decision aid in a simulated airline luggage screening task. Performance was measured by hit rates and false alarm rates; human-automation interaction was assessed via compliance, reliance and system trust. Results revealed that participants in the analytical frame were able to balance their hits and false alarms whereas the affective and comparative frames were unable to achieve this balance. Although the affective frame generated several hits, they also generated a large proportion of false alarms; they were strongly influenced by the negative incentive of "lives lost" and complied frequently with automation, even in instances when the automation was possibly incorrect. Results imply that in contexts such as security screening, emphasizing analytical thinking enables operators to perform effectively and utilize automation appropriately. However, emphasis on affective thought hinders the ability to weigh outcome probabilities and leads to inappropriate automation dependence. The findings have implications for both operator training and automation design in complex tasks.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/x9b7-sv96

Download

Share

COinS