Meike Kühne, Patricia Wollstadt, Tim Schrills, Thomas Franke, "Preregistration: Psychological factors underlying the perception of cooperation in a smart-charging scenario", The Open Science Framework (OSF.io), 2022.

It is often assumed to be beneficial for human-machine interaction (HMI) systems to behave cooperatively in interaction with a human user. In particular, it is assumed that cooperation in HMI leads to increased user satisfaction and task success. Despite a high interest in cooperation as a design paradigm for HMI, it remains unclear which psychological factors determine whether a machine is perceived as cooperative in an HMI context. The present study investigates two potential factors, namely the degree of system automation (SA) and the degree to which users are aware of the system's information processing as well as the information used by the system (SIPA). Participants are presented a scenario in which they interact with a smart-charging agent in a vehicle-to-home context. In the scenario, the agent is not able to meet a hypothetical charging request and asks the participant to change the request. How this request is presented is varied in two levels along the two factors system automation and degree of disclosed information. As dependent variables, the user behavior as well as markers for the user's mental model of the system and satisfaction with the interaction is recorded. The study investigates main effects of SA and SIPA on perceived cooperation, mental models, and user satisfaction.