Impact of Stress Induced by Public Health Emergency on Human-AI Interaction: Effects on Subjective Trust, Decision-Making Behavior, and Brain Activity

Abstract

Public health emergencies are events that occur suddenly and cause strong stress to human, which likely compelled people to minimize close social interactions while increasing their engagement with artificial intelligence (AI) systems. This paper investigated how stress induced by public health emergency events would influence people’ s interaction with AI advisors. A between-group experiment was conducted where thirty-six participants made decisions with a designed AI advisor in daily scenarios under three levels of stressed state (low, medium, and high) induced by public health emergency events. Participants’ decision results, subjective trust, and the brain activities in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) by fNIRS were recorded and analyzed. The results showed that participants under high-stress conditions exhibited significantly lower subjective trust in the AI advisor compared to those in the low-stress condition. Larger active brain areas in the PFC were found in participants under high-stress condition compared to participants in low-stress condition, indicating that stress treatment significantly activated participants’ prefrontal lobe. But the brain activity of participants in the low-stress condition became stronger than in the high-stress condition when making decisions with AI advisors. Although no significant difference was found in decision results, a trend of behavioral pattern was indicated from participants’ post-experiment interview: When the decision was only relevant to themselves, participants were more likely to stick to their own choices. In contrast, when decisions involved the benefit of others, participants in a stressed state tended to alter their original choices and adopt the AI’s advice.

Keywords: Public Health Emergency, Stress, fNIRS, Human-AI Interaction, Trust

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1007404