Cited by 110Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)Human-Automation Interaction and SafetyUsability and User Interface Design

Anchoring Bias Affects Mental Model Formation and User Reliance in Explainable AI Systems

Nourani, Mahsan, Roy, Chiradeep, Block, Jeremy E, Honeycutt, Donald R, Rahman, Tahrima, Ragan, Eric, Gogate, Vibhav·2021·26th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces

Abstract

EXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) approaches are used to bring transparency to machine learning and artificial intelligence models, and hence, improve the decision-making process for their end-users. While these methods aim to improve human understanding and their mental models, cognitive biases can still influence a user’s mental model and decision-making in ways that system designers do not anticipate. This paper presents research on cognitive biases due to ordering effects in intelligent systems. We conducted a controlled user study to understand how the order of observing system weaknesses and strengths can affect the user’s mental model, task performance, and reliance on the intelligent system, and we investigate the role of explanations in addressing this bias. Using an explainable video activity recognition tool in the cooking domain, we asked participants to verify whether a set of kitchen policies are being followed, with each policy focusing on a weakness or a strength. We controlled the order of the policies and the presence of explanations to test our hypotheses. Our main finding shows that those who observed system strengths early-on were more prone to automation bias and made significantly more errors due to positive first impressions of the system, while they built a more accurate mental model of the system competencies. On the other hand, those who encountered weaknesses earlier made significantly fewer errors since they tended to rely more on themselves, while they also underestimated model competencies due to having a more negative first impression of the model. Our work presents strong findings that aim to make intelligent system designers aware of such biases when designing such tools.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1145/3397481.3450639

Cites

44 of 44 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Many studies have found that cognitive biases (particularly anchoring bias and automation bias more broadly) can lead users to misunderstand model behavior and place unwarranted trust in AI systems.

    “Many studies have found that cognitive biases (particularly anchoring bias and automation bias more broadly) can lead users to misunderstand model behavior and place unwarranted trust in AI systems [20, 34, 52, 55].”
  • The opportunity to be really curious and play around can help mitigate anchoring bias.

    “The opportunity to 'be really curious to just kind of play around' [A2-05] can help mitigate anchoring bias [52].”
  • Recent research has shown that recommendation-driven explainable/interpretable AI has little effect on decision making, although this is not always the case.

    “However, recent research has shown that the recommendation-driven explainable/interpretable AI has little effect on decision making [1, 6-8, 28, 32], although this is not always the case [22,23,41].”

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Nourani, M., Roy, C., Block, J. E., Honeycutt, D. R., Rahman, T., Ragan, E., & Gogate, V.
Affiliations
  • University of Florida (US)
  • The University of Texas at Dallas (US)
  • INDIE Lab Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering, United States
Venue
26th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces
Publisher
ACM
Published
2021-04-14
Pages
340-350
OpenAlex
W3152997756
Cited by
107
References
44
Citations by year
2026: 21 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 23 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 4
FWCI
6.58
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
ACM International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI) (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • NSF (National Science Foundation) (1900767)
  • Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (N66001-17-2-4032)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Human-Automation Interaction and Safety
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Usability and User Interface Design
Keywords
anchoring effect, explainable AI, cognitive biases, automation bias, order effects, first impressions, video activity recognition, cooking, human-AI decision-making

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review