The ameliorating effects of accountability on automation bias

Recent research indicates that automated decision aids introduced into the workplace with the express purpose of reducing human error may have the paradoxical effect of simply changing the types of errors made. This series of studies documents a possible “automation bias” and uses the concept of social accountability as a “debiasing” intervention with two sample populations. Results indicate that subjects who perceived themselves as accountable for their accuracy or performance were significantly less likely to fall victim to automation bias in a simulated cockpit environment