IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0261467.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Conservatism predicts aversion to consequential Artificial Intelligence

Author

Listed:
  • Noah Castelo
  • Adrian F Ward

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize society by automating tasks as diverse as driving cars, diagnosing diseases, and providing legal advice. The degree to which AI can improve outcomes in these and other domains depends on how comfortable people are trusting AI for these tasks, which in turn depends on lay perceptions of AI. The present research examines how these critical lay perceptions may vary as a function of conservatism. Using five survey experiments, we find that political conservatism is associated with low comfort with and trust in AI—i.e., with AI aversion. This relationship between conservatism and AI aversion is explained by the link between conservatism and risk perception; more conservative individuals perceive AI as being riskier and are therefore more averse to its adoption. Finally, we test whether a moral reframing intervention can reduce AI aversion among conservatives.

Suggested Citation

  • Noah Castelo & Adrian F Ward, 2021. "Conservatism predicts aversion to consequential Artificial Intelligence," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(12), pages 1-19, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0261467
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0261467
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0261467
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0261467&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0261467?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dekel, Eddie & Scotchmer, Suzanne, 1999. "On the Evolution of Attitudes towards Risk in Winner-Take-All Games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 125-143, July.
    2. Blair Kidwell & Adam Farmer & David M. Hardesty, 2013. "Getting Liberals and Conservatives to Go Green: Political Ideology and Congruent Appeals," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 40(2), pages 350-367.
    3. Kate Crawford & Ryan Calo, 2016. "There is a blind spot in AI research," Nature, Nature, vol. 538(7625), pages 311-313, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Beth L. Fossen & Girish Mallapragada & Anwesha De, 2021. "Impact of Political Television Advertisements on Viewers’ Response to Subsequent Advertisements," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(2), pages 305-324, March.
    2. Olivier Gossner & Christoph Kuzmics, 2019. "Preferences Under Ignorance," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 60(1), pages 241-257, February.
    3. Dixon, Darcie & Mikolon, Sven, 2021. "Cents of self: How and when self-signals influence consumer value derived from choices of green products," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 365-386.
    4. Salih Tutun & Marina E. Johnson & Abdulaziz Ahmed & Abdullah Albizri & Sedat Irgil & Ilker Yesilkaya & Esma Nur Ucar & Tanalp Sengun & Antoine Harfouche, 2023. "An AI-based Decision Support System for Predicting Mental Health Disorders," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 1261-1276, June.
    5. Berg, Nathan & Biele, Guido & Gigerenzer, Gerd, 2010. "Does consistency predict accuracy of beliefs?: Economists surveyed about PSA," MPRA Paper 26590, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Nils Köbis & Jean-François Bonnefon & Iyad Rahwan, 2021. "Bad machines corrupt good morals," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 5(6), pages 679-685, June.
    7. Naderi, Iman & Paswan, Audhesh K. & Guzman, Francisco, 2018. "Beyond the shadow of a doubt: The effect of consumer knowledge on restaurant evaluation," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 221-229.
    8. Eugene Y. Chan & Jack Lin, 2022. "Political ideology and psychological reactance: how serious should climate change be?," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 172(1), pages 1-22, May.
    9. Hu, Saiquan & Jia, Xiao & Zhang, Xiaojin & Zheng, Xiaoying & Zhu, Junming, 2017. "How political ideology affects climate perception: Moderation effects of time orientation and knowledge," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 124-131.
    10. Kelly S. Fielding & Matthew J. Hornsey & Ha Anh Thai & Li Li Toh, 2020. "Using ingroup messengers and ingroup values to promote climate change policy," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 158(2), pages 181-199, January.
    11. Veljko Dubljevic & George List & Jovan Milojevich & Nirav Ajmeri & William A Bauer & Munindar P Singh & Eleni Bardaka & Thomas A Birkland & Charles H W Edwards & Roger C Mayer & Ioan Muntean & Thomas , 2021. "Toward a rational and ethical sociotechnical system of autonomous vehicles: A novel application of multi-criteria decision analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(8), pages 1-17, August.
    12. Nathan Berg & Gerd Gigerenzer, 2010. "As-if behavioral economics: neoclassical economics in disguise?," History of Economic Ideas, Fabrizio Serra Editore, Pisa - Roma, vol. 18(1), pages 133-166.
    13. Burkhard C. Schipper, 2021. "The evolutionary stability of optimism, pessimism, and complete ignorance," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 90(3), pages 417-454, May.
    14. Fábio Duarte & Ricardo Álvarez, 2019. "The data politics of the urban age," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-7, December.
    15. Enrico Diecidue & Haim Levy & Moshe Levy, 2020. "Probability Dominance," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(5), pages 1006-1020, December.
    16. Verena Schoenmueller & Oded Netzer & Florian Stahl, 2023. "Frontiers: Polarized America: From Political Polarization to Preference Polarization," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(1), pages 48-60, January.
    17. Burkhard Schipper, 2012. "Sex Hormones and Choice under Risk," Working Papers 127, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    18. Ulf J. J. Hahnel & Christian Mumenthaler & Tobia Spampatti & Tobias Brosch, 2020. "Ideology as Filter: Motivated Information Processing and Decision-Making in the Energy Domain," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(20), pages 1-19, October.
    19. Jon Truby, 2020. "Governing Artificial Intelligence to benefit the UN Sustainable Development Goals," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4), pages 946-959, July.
    20. Karen Page Winterich & Rebecca Walker Reczek & Tamar Makov, 2024. "How lack of knowledge on emissions and psychological biases deter consumers from taking effective action to mitigate climate change," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 52(5), pages 1475-1494, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0261467. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.