Dissociation of subjective and objective measures of trust in vehicle automation: a driving simulator study
DOI: 10.3389/ffutr.2025.1627368
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
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Summary
This study investigates the dissociation between subjective and objective measures of trust in vehicle automation, addressing the limitation that self-report questionnaires often interfere with primary task performance and cannot capture continuous trust dynamics. While previous research suggested that drivers exhibit higher subjective trust in lower-level automation (Level 2) than in higher-level systems (Level 3), it remained unclear whether behavioral indicators of trust follow similar patterns. The authors aimed to determine if objective behavioral measures, specifically hand position on the steering wheel, align with subjective trust ratings across different automation levels in a simulated driving environment. The researchers utilized a distributed driving simulator to test 25 licensed drivers, randomly assigned to either an active Level 2 (L2) or passive Level 3 (L3) automated driving system condition. Participants navigated eight high-risk near-miss scenarios, including intersection and highway merging situations, with or without visual obstructions. Trust was measured subjectively using established scales (Jian et al., 2000; Chancey et al., 2017) before and after the scenarios. Objectively, hand positions were coded from video footage using a five-point ordinal scale ranging from resting (low trust) to top of the wheel (high trust/low trust in automation) at five time intervals surrounding a collision alert. Results revealed a significant dissociation between the two measurement types. Behaviorally, drivers progressively moved their hands to higher positions on the steering wheel as they approached the collision point, indicating a gradual loss of trust in the automation during hazardous events. Crucially, drivers in the L2 condition displayed significantly lower trust (higher hand positions) than those in the L3 condition. This finding contrasts sharply with the subjective data, where trust ratings were statistically comparable between L2 and L3 groups. Correlation analyses further supported this dissociation, showing no significant association between hand position and most subjective trust dimensions, except for a negative correlation between distrust and hand position in the L3 group. The study concludes that subjective and objective measures of trust capture distinct aspects of human-automation interaction. The authors suggest that discrepancies may arise from working memory demands, temporal delays in reporting, or the intrusive nature of questionnaires. These findings imply that self-report methods may overlook critical behavioral cues, such as anticipatory hand movements, which signal declining trust in real-time. Consequently, the authors recommend that researchers and system designers integrate both behavioral and subjective measures to gain a comprehensive understanding of driver trust, thereby improving safety strategies for automated and connected vehicle technologies.
Provenance
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| extract | success | pdftotext | — | — | 126 | 2026-08-10 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-nvidia | summ-v5 | 124 | 2026-08-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 17 | 2026-08-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-nvidia on 2026-08-10; verification: verified.
Topics
Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.
- trust calibration
- trust in automation foundations
- automation
- automation surprise
- acceptance adoption
- situational awareness
Information type
What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).
- Empirical Findings: self report data
- Methodological Resource: validation psychometrics
- Theoretical Contribution: conceptual framework