The more they think, the less they want: studying people’s attitudes about autonomous vehicles could also contribute to shaping them

Abstract

In the past years, many studies have surveyed people’s intuitions about moral dilemmas involving autonomous vehicles (AVs). One widespread rationale for this line of research has been that understanding people’s attitudes about such dilemmas might help increase the pace of the adoption of autonomous vehicles—a goal that certain researchers consider a pressing moral imperative. However, surveying people is not a neutral process that is independent of respondents’ opinions and responses: in fact, respondents’ opinions can be influenced merely by taking part in a survey. In this paper, we present the results of three studies that suggest that participating in such surveys impacts participants’ willingness to acquire AVs. In our studies, we find that reflecting on AV dilemmas negatively impacted participants' willingness. Based on these results, we argue that prompting the general population to focus on AV dilemmas might highlight aspects of AVs that discourage their adoption. This results in a tension between the main rationale for empirical research on AV dilemmas and the impact of this research on the public at large.