Overcoming Anchoring Bias: The Potential of AI and XAI-based Decision Support
This addresses cognitive bias mitigation for information systems design, but it is incremental as it applies existing AI/XAI methods to a known bias.
The study tackled the problem of anchoring bias in decision-making by testing AI and XAI-based support in purchase decisions with 390 participants, finding that both AI alone and combined with XAI help mitigate this bias.
Information systems (IS) are frequently designed to leverage the negative effect of anchoring bias to influence individuals' decision-making (e.g., by manipulating purchase decisions). Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the explanations of its decisions through explainable AI (XAI) have opened new opportunities for mitigating biased decisions. So far, the potential of these technological advances to overcome anchoring bias remains widely unclear. To this end, we conducted two online experiments with a total of N=390 participants in the context of purchase decisions to examine the impact of AI and XAI-based decision support on anchoring bias. Our results show that AI alone and its combination with XAI help to mitigate the negative effect of anchoring bias. Ultimately, our findings have implications for the design of AI and XAI-based decision support and IS to overcome cognitive biases.