=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3728/paper16
|storemode=property
|title=Comparing the Impact of Social Proof and Freedom of Choice on Attitudes toward AI - Abstract 
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3728/paper16.pdf
|volume=Vol-3728
|authors=Sameha Alshakhsi,Areej Babiker,Dena Al-Thani,Christian Montag,Raian Ali
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/persuasive/AlshakhsiBAMA24
}}
==Comparing the Impact of Social Proof and Freedom of Choice on Attitudes toward AI - Abstract ==
<pdf width="1500px">https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3728/paper16.pdf</pdf>
<pre>
                         Comparing the Impact of Social Proof and Freedom of Choice on
                         Attitudes toward AI – Abstract
                         Sameha Alshakhsi 1, Areej Babiker 1, Dena Al-Thani 1, Christian Montag 2 and Raian Ali1
                         1 College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar
                         2 Department of Molecular Psychology, Institute of Psychology and Education, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany




                                         Abstract
                                         The study of users’ attitudes toward Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems holds significance for both
                                         societal and economic reasons. This research focuses on two key factors that we claim influence user
                                         attitudes towards AI: social proof, which refers to the system’s previous successful use by others without
                                         major issues, and freedom of choice, indicating the availability of alternatives not requiring interaction
                                         with AI systems (e.g., interacting with humans or manual supervision). We conducted an online study
                                         with 323 participants of Arab nationality from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region and 316
                                         participants from the UK. Participants were presented with four scenarios, each accompanied by
                                         illustrations, to represent the presence or absence of each of the two factors. For each scenario,
                                         participants were asked a series of questions assessing their trust, belief in the system’s contribution to
                                         well-being, perceived risks, belief that the system will lead to positive changes, and ethical implications.
                                         The results, in both cultural frameworks, clearly demonstrated that the presence of either factor had a
                                         statistically significant positive impact compared to its absence, as evidenced by increased trust,
                                         perceived enhancement of well-being, positive changes, and lower perceived risks and ethical
                                         implications. Notably, when one was present without the other, the scenario with freedom of choice but
                                         no social proof had a more positive impact on attitude than the scenario with only social proof but with
                                         no freedom of choice.
                                         Our findings highlight the significance of the two studied factors when producing, marketing, and
                                         operating AI. The results also show the importance of providing alternatives to AI and underscore that
                                         relying on others’ adoption of AI does not diminish the need for these alternatives. The validity of our
                                         results across diverse cultural frameworks, specifically within the Arab GCC and the United Kingdom
                                         (UK), enhances the robustness of our findings. This contribution is particularly noteworthy in
                                         addressing the replication crisis prevalent in psychological research, characterized by a predominant
                                         reliance on WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) samples.

                                         Keywords 1
                                         Attitude towards AI, Social Proof, Freedom of Choice, Human Factors

                                         Acknowledgement
                                         This publication was made possible by the NPRP 14 Cluster Grant Number NPRP 14C-0916-210015
                                         from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The findings herein reflect the
                                         work and are solely the responsibility of the authors.




                         In: Kiemute Oyibo, Wenzhen Xu, Elena Vlahu-Gjorgievska (eds.): The Adjunct Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on
                         Persuasive Technology, April 10, 2024, Wollongong, Australia
                         EMAIL: {saal32183, arbabiker, dalthani, raali2} @hbku.edu.qa (Sameha Alshakhsi, Areej Babiker, Dena Al-Thani, Raian Ali);
                         christian.montag@uni-ulm.de (Christian Montag)
                         ORCID: 0000-0002-2138-4731(Sameha Alshakhsi); 0000-0002-8105-1664 (Areej Babiker); 0000-0002-1474-2692 (Dena Al-Thani), 0000-
                         0001-8112-0837 (Christian Montag), 0000-0002-5285-7829 (Raian Ali)
                                      ©️ 2020 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
                                      Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
                                      CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)


CEUR
                  ceur-ws.org
Workshop      ISSN 1613-0073
Proceedings

</pre>