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Risk-taking in automated tasks: The role of sense of agency
1Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
Abstract:
Automation improves task performance, yet it also systematically alters how operators take risks. Which characteristics of automation drive this change, and through what psychological mechanism, remains unresolved: the sense of agency has often been implicated but never quantitatively tested as a mediator. By quantifying sense of agency through subjective ratings, this research explored the impact of automation level and reliability level on risk-taking. Experiment 1 showed that automation reduced risk-taking. Experiment 2 showed that higher automation level was associated with lower sense of agency and lower risk-taking, with sense of agency playing a complete mediating role (indirect effect = -0.440). Experiment 3 showed that higher automation reliability was associated with higher sense of agency and higher risk-taking, with sense of agency playing a partial mediating role (indirect effect = 0.553). These findings indicate that automation level and reliability shape risk-taking through distinct pathways to the sense of agency-the intention-action link and the action-effect link, respectively-and highlight the preservation of operators' sense of agency as a design consideration for safer automated systems.
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