What is it like to trust a rock? A functionalist perspective on trust and trustworthiness in artificial intelligence

The trustworthiness (or otherwise) of AI has been much in discussion of late, not least because of the recent publication of the EU Guidelines for Trustworthy AI. Discussions range from how we might make people trust AI to AI being not possible to trust, with many points inbetween. In this article, we question whether or not these discussions somewhat miss the point, which is that people are going ahead and basically doing their own thing anyway, and that we should probably help them. Acknowledging that trust is a heuristic that is widely used by humans in a range of situations, we lean on the literature concerning how humans make trust decisions, to arrive at a general model of how people might consider trust in AI (and other artefacts) for specific purposes in a human world. We then use a series of thought experiments and observations of trust and trustworthiness, to illustrate the use of the model in taking a functionalist perspective on trust decisions, including with machines. Our hope is that this forms a useful basis upon which to develop intelligent systems in a way that considers how and when people may trust them, and in doing so empowers people to make better trust decisions about AI.     

Should a luxury Brand's Chatbot use emoticons? Impact on brand status

Luxury brands are increasingly adopting chatbots for online customer service. But, little is known about the role of adding design features such as emoticons on customers' luxury experience. This study fills this research gap by exploring the influence of a luxury brand chatbot's adoption of emoticons on status perception and its underlying mechanisms. Results from two experiments suggest that luxury brands might be better off not using emoticons in chatbot communications because it dampens the brand status perception due to perceived unexpectedness, which in turn decreases the perception of the appropriateness of the interaction with chatbots. However, this negative effect of luxury brand's use of emoticons in chatbot communication only exists for traditional luxury brands, not for masstige brands. This study advances the literature on AI, particularly regarding luxury brand-specific chatbot applications. It also offers insights for luxury brand managers that they should be cautious in adopting emoticons in chatbot communication given the risk of ruining the brand status, especially when the brand is a traditional luxury brand as opposed to a masstige brand.     

Does brand spelling influence memory? The case of auditorily presented brand names

We present a framework based on psycholinguistic theory to explain how individuals spell auditorily-presented information. We use the framework to predict and test how spelling-related characteristics of brand names and factors related to the context in which brand names are presented (e.g., spelling primes) will make the brands more or less memorable. Further, we reveal the process through which spelling-related linguistic variables influence brand recall: the dual-code (both written and auditory) that results from spelling a brand correctly leads to greater ability to later recall the brand. Our framework identifies two routes that interact when individuals have to transcribe a brand: the lexical (top-down) route and the sublexical (bottom-up) route.     

Is Cinderella resurging? The impact of consumers' underdog disposition on brand preferences: Underdog brand biography and brand status as moderators

This research attempts to explore the moderating roles of underdog brand biography and brand status in the impact of consumers' underdog disposition on brand preferences. A total of 218 on‐the‐job graduate students were randomly assigned to a 2 (explicitness of underdog brand biography: implicit vs. explicit) × 2 (brand status: emerging brands vs. established brands) factorial design. Results show that consumers with strong underdog disposition are likely to generate stronger brand preferences for established brands accompanied with explicit underdog brand biographies than emerging brands accompanied with explicit underdog brand biographies; in contrast, consumers with strong underdog disposition are likely to engender no differential brand preferences for emerging brands accompanied with implicit underdog brand biographies over established brands accompanied with implicit underdog brand biographies. Moreover, consumers with a weak underdog disposition are likely to engender stronger brand preferences for established brands than emerging brands, regardless of the explicitness of underdog brand biography. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Salesperson–brand relationship: main dimensions and impact within the context of private brand retailing

Private branding is considered one of the most effective and efficient influencers of retailers’ return on investment in their fiercely competitive industry. However, no study to date has examined these brands’ impact on salespeople's motivation and commitment to their own employer. This study, based upon extensive qualitative and quantitative research, shows that salespeople's relationships with their private brands can be influential in increasing their selling motivation and organizational commitment. Toward this end, our study first identifies the three important dimensions of salesperson–brand relationship (affect, trust, perceived customer recognition due to the brand) and develops their measures. Second, the findings show that salesperson–brand relationships, which exist between the retail frontline employees and retailers’ private brand, strongly influence sales motivation and firm commitment with a moderating influence of role clarity regarding management's expectations from its salespeople.     

Patterns of buyer behavior and brand metrics in a “high loyalty” category: Liquor

This study examines behavioral brand loyalty in a category that, based on industry evidence, is expected to exhibit high loyalty: liquor (distilled spirits). The study aims to extend knowledge of the factors that underlie behavioral loyalty, including brand characteristics of price level and promotion incidence, and buyer characteristics of age and income. Drawing on theory and evidence relating to prospect theory, the “smart shopper” concept, as well as literature pertaining to age and loyalty, we develop a series of hypotheses and test them using extensive consumer panel purchasing data for US households. The analysis confirms that liquor is indeed a high loyalty category in the context of consumer goods, evidenced via high share of category requirements (SCR). The study also identifies that liquor brands follow the double jeopardy pattern, whereby larger-share brands enjoy somewhat higher loyalty, and that exceptions—brands with unusually high or low volume loyalty for their size—are related to high volume purchased per occasion. In turn, there is a strong negative association between brand price and high average volume purchased per occasion (i.e., cheaper brands are bought in larger quantity or volume than expensive ones). The study also finds that brands with a low price tend to be particularly attractive to low-income households, and that, in turn, low-income households exhibit higher brand loyalty. These new findings contribute to the literature on brand loyalty and the links between loyalty, brand characteristics, and demographics.     

Are they bothered? How the opportunity to damage a partner's reputation influences giving behavior in a trust game

Studies of reputation use in social interactions have indicated that when individuals can acquire a positive or negative reputation, they are motivated to act in a cooperative fashion. However, few researchers have examined how the opportunity to confer this reputation on a partner may influence an individual's behavior in a mixed-motive situation. In the present study, an experiment using a trust-game paradigm indicated that participants felt that they had more control over their partner's reputation when they could leave feedback regarding the outcome of their interaction with their partner. However, the participants would only donate a substantial portion of their initial endowment (i.e., over 50%) when they could leave feedback for a partner and when they felt that their partner was concerned about his or her own reputation. The author discusses these findings in regard to how they might apply to real-world reputation use and how possible future studies may further expand knowledge in this area.     

When do children trust the expert? Benevolence information influences children's trust more than expertise

How do children use informant niceness, meanness, and expertise when choosing between informant claims and crediting informants with knowledge? In Experiment 1, preschoolers met two experts providing conflicting claims for which only one had relevant expertise. Five‐year‐olds endorsed the relevant expert's claim and credited him with knowledge more often than 3‐year‐olds. In Experiment 2, niceness/meanness information was added. Although children most strongly preferred the nice relevant expert, the children often chose the nice irrelevant expert when the relevant one was mean. In Experiment 3, a mean expert was paired with a nice non‐expert. Although this nice informant had no expertise, preschoolers continued to endorse his claims and credit him with knowledge. Also noteworthy, children in all three experiments seemed to struggle more to choose the relevant expert's claim than to credit him with knowledge. Together, these experiments demonstrate that niceness/meanness information can powerfully influence how children evaluate informants.     

Should I trust you? Autistic traits predict reduced appearance‐based trust decisions

Facial impressions of trustworthiness guide social decisions in the general population, as shown by financial lending in economic Trust Games. As an exception, autistic boys fail to use facial impressions to guide trust decisions, despite forming typical facial trustworthiness impressions (Autism, 19, 2015a, 1002). Here, we tested whether this dissociation between forming and using facial impressions of trustworthiness extends to neurotypical men with high levels of autistic traits. Forty‐six Caucasian men completed a multi‐turn Trust Game, a facial trustworthiness impressions task, the Autism‐Spectrum Quotient, and two Theory of Mind tasks. As hypothesized, participants’ levels of autistic traits had no observed effect on the impressions formed, but negatively predicted the use of those impressions in trust decisions. Thus, the dissociation between forming and using facial impressions of trustworthiness extends to the broader autism phenotype. More broadly, our results identify autistic traits as an important source of individual variation in the use of facial impressions to guide behaviour. Interestingly, failure to use these impressions could potentially represent rational behaviour, given their limited validity.     

Time to retire the concept of brand personality? Extending the critique and introducing a new framework

In consumer behaviour literature, there is a growing concern about the construct validity of brand personality. We extend this critique and introduce a new approach for the conceptualisation and measurement of human brand associations (HBA). A qualitative study of free associations to six brands in different categories and cultures reveals that brand personality traits, as defined in the literature, are practically non‐existent in real associative networks for brands. The responses are, however, in line with the new HBA framework. The findings suggest that consumer researchers should retire the concept of brand personality and use the new approach instead.     

Explaining the justice-performance relationship: trust as exchange deepener or trust as uncertainty reducer?

Past research has revealed significant relationships between organizational justice dimensions and job performance, and trust is thought to be one mediator of those relationships. However, trust has been positioned in justice theorizing in 2 different ways, either as an indicator of the depth of an exchange relationship or as a variable that reflects levels of work-related uncertainty. Moreover, trust scholars distinguish between multiple forms of trust, including affect- and cognition-based trust, and it remains unclear which form is most relevant to justice effects. To explore these issues, we built and tested a more comprehensive model of trust mediation in which procedural, interpersonal, and distributive justice predicted affect- and cognition-based trust, with those trust forms predicting both exchange- and uncertainty-based mechanisms. The results of a field study in a hospital system revealed that the trust variables did indeed mediate the relationships between the organizational justice dimensions and job performance, with affect-based trust driving exchange-based mediation and cognition-based trust driving uncertainty-based mediation.     

Does partisan media make a pawn of mistrust? Institutional trust and preventive COVID-19 health behaviors in a polarized pandemic

In a rapidly developing crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, people are often faced with contradictory or changing information and must determine what sources to trust. Across five time points (N = 5902) we examine how trust in various sources predicts COVID-19 health behaviors. Trust in experts and national news predicted more engagement with most health behaviors from April 2020 to March 2022 and trust in Fox news, which often positioned itself as counter to the mainstream on COVID-19, predicted less engagement. However, we also examined a particular public health behavior (masking) before and after the CDC announcement recommending masks on 3 April 2020 (which reversed earlier expert advice discouraging masks for the general public). Prior to the announcement, trust in experts predicted less mask-wearing while trust in Fox News predicted more. These relationships disappeared in the next 4 days following the announcement and reversed in the 2 years that follow, and emerged for vaccination in the later time points. We also examine how the media trusted by Democrats and Republicans predicts trust in experts and in turn health behaviors. Broadly we consider how the increasingly fragmented epistemic environment has implications for polarization on matters of public health.     

Brand image and brand loyalty: Do they show the same deviations from a common underlying pattern?

The aim of the paper is to investigate whether deviations from the double jeopardy pattern observed in brand buying (panel) data such as niche brands (brands with few users, but high levels of brand loyalty) and change‐of‐pace brands (brands with many users, but low levels of brand loyalty) correspond with deviations from the same pattern in brand image data (i.e. brand image associations gathered through consumer surveys). The analysis of a unique data set in three product categories including brand purchases and brand image associations from the same consumers and for the same brands shows that such deviations in brand buying data and in brand image data seldom correspond. Moreover, deviations from the double jeopardy pattern in brand image data are rare and imply the existence of an underlying impact of a brand's associative rate (i.e. the average number of associations a brand obtains in a brand image consumer survey) on brand loyalty (measured as the frequency of brand buying). These findings provide contribution to buyer behaviour theory and have practical implications for branding strategies. For instance, to obtain any impact on brand loyalty, marketers may need to develop branding strategies aimed at increasing a brand's associative rate, whilst maintaining or enlarging its level of market penetration. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Are brand names special words? Letter visual-similarity affects the identification of brand names,but not common words

Brand names are often considered a special type of words of special relevance to examine the role of visual codes during reading: unlike common words, brand names are typically presented with the same letter-case configuration (e.g., IKEA, adidas). Recently, Pathak et al. (European Journal of Marketing, 2019, 53 , 2109) found an effect of visual similarity for misspelled brand names when the participants had to decide whether the brand name was spelled correctly or not (e.g., tacebook [baseword: facebook] was responded more slowly and less accurately than xacebook). This finding is at odds with both orthographically based visual-word recognition models and prior experiments using misspelled common words (e.g., viotin [baseword: violin ] is identified as fast as viocin ). To solve this puzzle, we designed two experiments in which the participants had to decide whether the presented item was written correctly. In Experiment 1, following a procedure similar to Pathak et al. (European Journal of Marketing, 2019, 53 , 2109), we examined the effect of visual similarity on misspelled brand names with/without graphical information (e.g., anazon vs. atazon [baseword: amazon ]). Experiment 2 was parallel to Experiment 1, but we focused on misspelled common words (e.g., anarillo vs. atarillo ; baseword: amarillo [yellow in Spanish]). Results showed a sizeable effect of visual similarity on misspelled brand names – regardless of their graphical information, but not on misspelled common words. These findings suggest that visual codes play a greater role when identifying brand names than common words. We examined how models of visual-word recognition can account for this dissociation.     

The effects of self-brand connections on responses to brand failure: A new look at the consumer–brand relationship

We argue that consumers with high self-brand connections (SBC) respond to negative brand information as they do to personal failure — they experience a threat to their positive self-view. After viewing negative brand information, high (vs. low) SBC consumers reported lower state self-esteem. Consumers with high SBC also maintained favorable brand evaluations despite negative brand information. However, when they completed an unrelated self-affirmation task, they lowered their brand evaluations the same as low SBC consumers. This finding suggests that high SBC consumers' reluctance to lower brand evaluation might be driven by a motivation to protect the self rather than the brand.     

How the initial level of trust in automated driving impacts drivers’ behaviour and early trust construction

Trust in Automation is known to influence human-automation interaction and user behaviour. In the Automated Driving (AD) context, studies showed the impact of drivers’ Trust in Automated Driving (TiAD), and linked it with, e.g., difference in environment monitoring or driver’s behaviour. This study investigated the influence of driver’s initial level of TiAD on driver’s behaviour and early trust construction during Highly Automated Driving (HAD). Forty drivers participated in a driving simulator study. Based on a trust questionnaire, participants were divided in two groups according to their initial level of TiAD: high (Trustful) vs. low (Distrustful). Declared level of trust, gaze behaviour and Non-Driving-Related Activities (NDRA) engagement were compared between the two groups over time. Results showed that Trustful drivers engaged more in NDRA and spent less time monitoring the road compared to Distrustful drivers. However, an increase in trust was observed in both groups. These results suggest that initial level of TiAD impact drivers’ behaviour and further trust evolution.     

How valuable is a well‐crafted design and name brand?: Recognition and willingness to pay

Preferences for similarly designed consumer products, evaluated blind and branded and also with and without prices, were tested in a consumer setting. The consumer's perceptual experience led to preference of the well‐crafted high‐priced option. This preference was enhanced by priming consumers with background information about the brand, perhaps causing the subjects to guess which choice was the well‐known brand before evaluation. Preferences for that choice increased again when brand names were visible during evaluation. When actual prices were added to the evaluations, preferences for the well‐known brand were very robust to high prices, indicating the strength of the brand name. Using the least preferred option and the lowest price as an anchor, the consumers' price threshold to pay for the preferred design and the brand name was computed. Attempts to explain and predict individual differences of choices using measures of inherent design acumen, prior experience, and purchasing behavior were largely unsuccessful. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Leave or stay? The role of self‐construal on luxury brand attitudes and purchase intentions in response to brand rejection

Marketing managers of luxury brands often use exclusionary marketing tactics that can lead consumers to feel rejected by those brands. In our research, we examine whether consumers with independent self‐construals are more likely than those with interdependent self‐construals to downgrade their evaluations of a luxury brand when feeling rejected by it. Results of three studies support this hypothesis. Using a manipulation of brand rejection with hypothetical future scenarios, study 1 provides evidence that consumers with a higher chronic independent (versus interdependent) self‐construal are more likely to lower their brand attitudes and purchase intentions of a desirable luxury brand that rejects them. Study 2 replicates the moderating effect of self‐construal at a cultural level, comparing Chinese and American respondents. Study 3 again compares self‐construals at a cultural level, but manipulates brand rejection by asking respondents to recall a prior rejection experience. Importantly, Study 3 reveals a mediating influence of self‐brand connection. That is, independents, when recalling an experience of luxury brand rejection, were more likely than interdependents to report a decrease in their feelings of connectedness to the rejecting brand, which in turn resulted in lower attitudes toward the brand and lower purchase intentions. Our findings provide luxury brand marketers with insights for both niche branding strategy design and cross‐cultural customer relationship management.