An Affect-Trust (A-T) Model With Regards to Technological Errors

Much research has differentiated between the effects of automation false alarms and misses on operator trust and subsequent behavior. Further research has demonstrated that trust is a multiple-process construct that mediates the relationship between automation errors and behavior. The purpose of the current study was to expand on this model by incorporating affect as a mediating variable between smoke detector errors and trust. This expanded model, which we refer to as the Affect-Trust model, is supported by two experiments. The experiments involved mediation analyses, which revealed that affect almost totally mediates the relationship between both types of smoke detector errors and trust.