Human preferences toward algorithmic advice in a word association task.

Algorithms provide recommendations to human decision makers across a variety of task domains. For many problems, humans will rely on algorithmic advice to make their choices and at times will even show complacency. In other cases, humans are mistrustful of algorithmic advice, or will hold algorithms to higher standards of performance.

Humans rely more on algorithms than social influence as a task becomes more difficult.

Algorithms have begun to encroach on tasks traditionally reserved for human judgment and are increasingly capable of performing well in novel, difficult tasks. At the same time, social influence, through social media, online reviews, or personal networks, is one of the most potent forces affecting individual decision-making. In three preregistered online experiments, we found that people rely more on algorithmic advice relative to social influence as tasks become more difficult.