Trust Contagion in Team of Teams (ToT) for Human-Autonomy Teaming

While trust in human-autonomy teams (HATs) has been studied at the single-team level for years, the dynamics of trust spreading across multiple interconnected teams—known as Team of Teams (ToT)—remains underexplored. This study investigated how trust spreads between teams within a ToT structure. Using a remotely piloted aircraft system synthetic task environment, 40 HATs distributed across two universities were studied: one human participant (photographer) and two confederates portraying a human navigator and an autonomous pilot teammate (using Wizard of Oz methodology) at each site. Teams were paired into ToTs, with each team working simultaneously on a shared mission involving photographing target waypoints. In one team, trust or distrust toward the autonomous pilot teammate was manipulated through both behavioral (mismatched reported vs. actual UAV settings) and verbal trust/distrust (explicit trust/distrust statements) spreading. Trust was measured using the Multi-Dimensional Measure of Trust (MDMT). Results showed significant differences in trust levels between teams, with both trust/distrust manipulations effectively influencing the directly manipulated team and their partner team. These findings extend our understanding of trust dynamics in distributed team systems and provide insights for designing effective human-autonomy collaboration in interconnected team environments.