AI Recommendations and Non-instrumental Image Concerns
This addresses a key barrier to effective human-AI collaboration, particularly in domains where social perception matters, though it is incremental in identifying a specific psychological factor.
The paper investigates why individuals underutilize AI recommendations, finding that non-instrumental image concerns—worries about perception without monetary consequences—lead people to disregard AI advice and reduce task performance, as demonstrated through an online experiment.
There is growing enthusiasm about the potential for humans and AI to collaborate by leveraging their respective strengths. Yet in practice, this promise often falls short. This paper uses an online experiment to identify non-instrumental image concerns as a key reason individuals underutilize AI recommendations. I show that concerns about how one is perceived, even when those perceptions carry no monetary consequences, lead participants to disregard AI advice and reduce task performance.