The facilitation of trust in automation: a qualitative study of behaviour and attitudes towards emerging technology in military culture

High speciality and criticality domains categorise the most researched areas in the field of Trust in Automation. Minimal studies have explored the nuances of the psycho-social environment and organisational culture in the development of appropriate mental models on dispositional trust. To aid integration of human operators with emergent specialised systems, there is ambition to introduce Human-Human/Human-System analogies with AI Avatars and 3D representations of environments (Ministry of Defence, 2018). Due to the criticisms in the literature of Human-Human and Human-System teaming analogues this research has explored personal narratives of civilians and military personnel about technology, adaptability and how to facilitate beneficial attitudes and behaviours in appropriate trust, reliance and misuse. A subdivision of the research explores the socio-cultural idiosyncrasies within the different echelons of the military as variances in authority and kinship provide insight on informing training targeted to unique domains. The thesis proposes that there are core hindrances to tacit trust facilitation with automation as cognitive rigidity towards individual and group identities impact socially constructed social responses and internal mental models. Furthermore, as automation broaches category boundaries there may be resistance and discomfort as a result of unpredictable social contracts whereby transactional and relational trust-related power dynamics are unknown or unpredictable