Super-intelligence or Superstition? Exploring Psychological Factors Underlying Unwarranted Belief in AI Predictions
This study investigates psychological factors influencing belief in AI predictions about personal behavior, comparing it to belief in astrology and personality-based predictions. Through an experiment with 238 participants, we examined how cognitive style, paranormal beliefs, AI attitudes, personali...
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Main Authors | , , , |
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Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
12.08.2024
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | This study investigates psychological factors influencing belief in AI
predictions about personal behavior, comparing it to belief in astrology and
personality-based predictions. Through an experiment with 238 participants, we
examined how cognitive style, paranormal beliefs, AI attitudes, personality
traits, and other factors affect perceived validity, reliability, usefulness,
and personalization of predictions from different sources. Our findings reveal
that belief in AI predictions is positively correlated with belief in
predictions based on astrology and personality psychology. Notably, paranormal
beliefs and positive AI attitudes significantly increased perceived validity,
reliability, usefulness, and personalization of AI predictions.
Conscientiousness was negatively correlated with belief in predictions across
all sources, and interest in the prediction topic increased believability
across predictions. Surprisingly, cognitive style did not significantly
influence belief in predictions. These results highlight the "rational
superstition" phenomenon in AI, where belief is driven more by mental
heuristics and intuition than critical evaluation. We discuss implications for
designing AI systems and communication strategies that foster appropriate trust
and skepticism. This research contributes to our understanding of the
psychology of human-AI interaction and offers insights for the design and
deployment of AI systems. |
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DOI: | 10.48550/arxiv.2408.06602 |