Thinking time increases perceived trustworthiness of human but not AI advice
Abstract
How do people evaluate the trustworthiness of advice received from other people or AI systems? One signal for trustworthiness is thinking time: the amount of time the advice-giver spent thinking about what advice to give. Different factors may influence inferences based on thinking time: greater thinking time may reflect a lack of knowledge or confidence. Conversely, it may reflect higher-quality advice resulting from more thorough deliberation. We study participants' judgments of trustworthiness based on thinking time by presenting them with pairs of hypothetical human or AI advisors who spent more or less time thinking about their decision. Across most domains we tested, participants preferred longer deliberation in human advisors, but did not show such a preference with AI. These results provide preliminary evidence that people can make sophisticated judgments about advice quality by integrating knowledge about the advice giver and the time it took them to generate their advice.