Date of Award

12-2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Jessica L. Wildman

Second Advisor

Meredith B. Carroll

Third Advisor

Gary N. Burns

Fourth Advisor

Amanda L. Thayer

Abstract

Although human-agent teams have received significant attention from both practitioners and researchers in recent years, human attitudes and emotions towards agents present collaborative barriers that reduce effective teaming. Borrowing from literature on traditional human team interventions, this study examines how team charters may be leveraged to set up better trust relationships and emotional states over time, and how these key emergent states influence both objective performance scores and subjective performance ratings. Using data from 43 individuals who participated in a search-and-rescue simulation with four agent teammates, discontinuous growth modeling was used to examine differences in trust and upsetness over time between HATs with and without a team charter. Subsequently, regression-based approaches were used to assess how objective and subjective performance were impacted by trust and upsetness. Although no significant effect of team charters was found on trust or upsetness over time, several trust scores predicted subjective performance ratings. In spite of producing few significant results, key study limitations and future research ideas are discussed to guide subsequent research on team charters in human-agent teams, including design considerations for future experimental paradigms and specific outcomes of interest.

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