The Influence of Interdependence Relationships on Trust Repair Strategies and Collaboration Fluency

Abstract

Intelligent agents are increasingly required to engage in collaboration with humans in the context of human-agent teams (HATs) to achieve shared goals. Interdependence is a fundamental concept in teamwork. It enables humans and robots to leverage their capabilities and collaboratively work towards a shared goal, fostering the development of trust through joint activities. Considering the great importance of trust, the effectiveness of trust repair strategies is crucial as they help mitigate the negative consequences of errors, enabling efficient collaboration between humans and robots. For this reason, the effectiveness of the trust repair strategies must be examined comprehensively by taking into consideration multiple factors, including the interdependence relationships within HATs. This paper aims to examine the impact of a mix of interdependence and independence relationships on trust violation and repair, but also on collaboration fluency. Thus, an experiment (n = 30) was conducted to study how interdependence affects trust violation, trust repair and collaboration fluency. Participants collaborated with a robot during a search and rescue mission in a simulated environment. Results show that there is a significant influence of interdependence on trust violations, but not on collaboration fluency or trust repair. Furthermore, the paper also emphasises the need for future research that investigates the effectiveness of trust repair strategies for HATs in different interdependence relationships.