Authors
Elmira Zahmat Doost, Jamie C Gorman, Matthew J Scalia, Shiwen Zhou, Xiaoyun Yin, Ray Hao, Nathan J McNeese, Wen Duan, Guo Freeman, Gregory J Funke, Michael T Tolston
Published in
Ergonomics. Pages 1-24. Oct 20, 2026. Epub Oct 20, 2026.
Abstract
Trust in human-autonomy teams is dynamic and shaped by ongoing interaction, yet most measures rely on retrospective self-report, limiting detection of how trust and distrust propagate in real time. This study introduces and validates influence-an interaction-based metric computed as the average mutual information between joint and team-state time series-to track the spread of trust and distrust. Forty-five participants completed five simulated Remotely Piloted Aircraft System missions in three-member teams, with trust manipulated through communicative and behavioural spreading across congruent, mismatched, and human-versus-agent conditions. Influence predicted subjective team trust and objective performance during active spreading but not in a no-spreading control and showed strong reliability and construct validity. As validation checks, influence recovered known effects: credibility violations damaged trust most, and human sources outweighed agents. Critically, the influence-trust relationship reversed direction across contexts, revealing a context-dependent mechanism. Influence thus offers a real-time, unobtrusive measure linking interaction structure to team outcomes.
PMID:
42900570
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 21 Oct 2026.
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