Trust and the Compliance-Reliance Paradigm: The Effects of Risk, Error Bias, and Reliability on Trust and Dependence

This study provides a theoretical link between trust and the compliance-reliance paradigm. We propose that for trust mediation to occur, the operator must be presented with a salient choice, and there must be an element of risk for dependence.

Research suggests that false alarms and misses affect dependence via two independent processes, hypothesized as trust in signals and trust in nonsignals. These two trust types manifest in categorically different behaviors: compliance and reliance.

Eighty-eight participants completed a primary flight task and a secondary signaling system task. Participants evaluated their trust according to the informational bases of trust: performance, process, and purpose. Participants were in a high- or low-risk group. Signaling systems varied by reliability (90%, 60%) within subjects and error bias (false alarm prone, miss prone) between subjects.

False-alarm rate affected compliance but not reliance. Miss rate affected reliance but not compliance. Mediation analyses indicated that trust mediated the relationship between false-alarm rate and compliance. Bayesian mediation analyses favored evidence indicating trust did not mediate miss rate and reliance. Conditional indirect effects indicated that factors of trust mediated the relationship between false-alarm rate and compliance (i.e., purpose) and reliance (i.e., process) but only in the high-risk group.

The compliance-reliance paradigm is not the reflection of two types of trust.

This research could be used to update training and design recommendations that are based upon the assumption that trust causes operator responses regardless of error bias.