ERIC Number: EJ1421774
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024-Apr
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-2365-7464
Available Date: N/A
A Bonus Task Boosts People's Willingness to Offload Cognition to an Algorithm
Basil Wahn; Laura Schmitz
Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, v9 Article 24 2024
With the increased sophistication of technology, humans have the possibility to offload a variety of tasks to algorithms. Here, we investigated whether the extent to which people are willing to offload an attentionally demanding task to an algorithm is modulated by the availability of a bonus task and by the knowledge about the algorithm's capacity. Participants performed a multiple object tracking (MOT) task which required them to visually track targets on a screen. Participants could offload an unlimited number of targets to a "computer partner". If participants decided to offload the entire task to the computer, they could instead perform a bonus task which resulted in additional financial gain - however, this gain was conditional on a high performance accuracy in the MOT task. Thus, participants should only offload the entire task if they trusted the computer to perform accurately. We found that participants were significantly more willing to completely offload the task if they were informed beforehand that the computer's accuracy was flawless (Experiment 1 vs. 2). Participants' offloading behavior was not significantly affected by whether the bonus task was incentivized or not (Experiment 2 vs. 3). These results combined with those from our previous study (Wahn et al. in PLoS ONE 18:e0286102, 2023), which did not include a bonus task but was identical otherwise, show that the human willingness to offload an attentionally demanding task to an algorithm is considerably boosted by the availability of a bonus task - even if not incentivized - and by the knowledge about the algorithm's capacity.
Descriptors: College Students, Algorithms, Cognitive Processes, Technology Uses in Education, Task Analysis, Eye Movements, Visual Stimuli, Motion, Accuracy, Achievement Gains, Computer Uses in Education
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research; Tests/Questionnaires
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Data File: URL: https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1186%2Fs41235-024-00550-0/MediaObjects/41235_2024_550_MOESM1_ESM.docx
Author Affiliations: N/A