When Confidence Meets Accuracy: Exploring the Effects of Multiple Performance Indicators on Trust in Machine Learning Models

Previous research shows that laypeople’s trust in a machine learning model can be affected by both performance measurements of the model on the aggregate level and performance estimates on individual predictions. However, it is unclear how people would trust the model when multiple performance indicators are presented at the same time. We conduct an exploratory human-subject experiment to answer this question. We find that while the level of model confidence significantly affects people’s belief in model accuracy, both the model’s stated and observed accuracy generally have a larger impact on people’s willingness to follow the model’s predictions as well as their self-reported levels of trust in the model, especially after observing the model’s performance in practice. We hope the empirical evidence reported in this work could open doors to further studies to advance understanding of how people perceive, process, and react to performance-related information of machine learning.