A Model of Team Trust in Human-Agent Teams

Trust is a central element for effective teamwork and successful human-technology collaboration. Although technologies, such as agents, are increasingly becoming autonomous team members operating alongside humans, research on team trust in human-agent teams is missing. Thus far, empirical and theoretical work have focused on aspects of trust only towards the agent as a technology neglecting how team trust - with regards to the human-agent team as a whole - develops. In this paper, we present a model of team trust in human-agent teams combining two streams of research: (1) theories of trust in human teams and (2) theories of human-computer interaction (HCI). We propose different antecedents (integrity, ability, benevolence) that influence team trust in human-agent teams as well as individual, team, system, and temporal factors that impact this relationship. The goal of the present article is to advance our understanding of team trust in human-agent teams and encourage an integration between HCI and team research when planning future research. This will also help to design trustworthy human-agent teams and thereby, when introducing human-agent teams, support organizational functioning.