How Much Trust is Enough? Towards Calibrating Trust in Technology
This work addresses the need for calibrated trust in technology for HCI practitioners, but it is incremental as it focuses on interpreting an existing scale.
The study tackled the problem of users struggling to understand technology's capabilities and limitations by empirically evaluating the Human-Computer Trust Scale (HCTS) to provide a guideline for interpreting trust propensity assessments, finding it a promising tool for initial evaluations.
The role of trust within Human-Computer Interaction is being redefined. With the increasing omnipresence, autonomy, and opacity of technology, users often struggle to understand the capabilities and limitations of systems. In this article, we present the results of an empirical study designed to provide a practical, evidence-based interpretation of trust propensity assessment using the Human-Computer Trust Scale (HCTS). We outline the process used to develop a guideline for interpreting the instrument's results and explain the rationale for our decisions, advocating for calibrating trust in technology within HCI. Our findings demonstrate that the HCTS is a promising tool for conducting an initial evaluation of propensity to trust, but that such an assessment requires reflection and interpretation that should be considered within the context of the interaction.