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Trust and Human-Machine Teaming: A Qualitative Study 105

6.1.7 Communication Richness
Related to the above dimension, human-agent teams should be capable of
rich dialogue to convey task and team-based information between each
other (Chen & Barnes, 2014). Rich communicative and social cue affor-
dances may make robots more effective when interacting with humans
(Mutlu, 2011). The key distinction between this dimension and the above
dimension is that the above dimension discusses nontask-oriented commu-
nications, which are geared toward team-building. The current dimension
focuses on the richness of communication in general, which could include
both task-oriented and nontask communications. Media richness is believed
to facilitate team effectiveness due to the added social and task-based infor-
mation that rich media can convey (Hanumantharao & Grabowski, 2006).
The greater the richness of communication affordances between the human
and the technology, the greater the likelihood of the human viewing the
technology as a teammate versus a tool.

6.1.8 Synchrony
Effective teams are comprised of team members who have a shared aware-
ness of the task, the team, and the context. Indeed, shared awareness and,
more specifically, having synchronized mental models has been shown to
enhance team effectiveness (Hinds & Mortensen, 2005). Shared mental
models have also been hypothesized to be important for human-machine
teams (Ososky et al., 2013). Having synchrony between team members
allows the team to share a common perception of the team and its capabil-
ities/limitations, the context, which facilitates joint adaptation, and the task,
which enables the team members to anticipate the actions of others.
In summary, the current paper examines the antecedents of human-
machine trust and the components of human-machine teaming using the
Autonomous Agent Teammate-Likeness model (Wynne & Lyons, 2018)
as a guiding rubric. It was expected that the trust antecedent themes of reli-
ability, predictability, helping solve a problem, proactively helping, transpar-
ency (logic, intent, and state), liking, familiarity, and social interaction
would be expressed in the open-ended rationale for why individuals report
trust (or distrust) of the technology. It was expected that perceptions of
agency, benevolence, interdependence, relationship-building, communica-
tion richness, and synchrony would be associated with more teammate
(versus tool) perceptions.