Graduate student Hannah Overbye-Thompson, Professor Kristy Hamilton, and former graduate student now Assistant Professor at Michigan State University Jacob Fisher won a Top Paper Award from the Communication Science and Biology Interest Group for the 75th International Communication Association Conference, Denver, CO, June 2025. Their paper is “Expectation of algorithm bias increases caution: Implications for human-in-the-loop decisions.”
Here’s the abstract: Algorithms increasingly mediate our interactions with the world. Growing evidence indicates that these algorithms are prone to bias, favoring certain outcomes over others. Recent legislation mandates human oversight of algorithmic decisions to mitigate biases, but the effectiveness of such “human-in-the-loop” (HITL) interventions remains uncertain. This study investigates how individuals perceive and respond to potential algorithm bias in a simulated loan approval process, employing drift-diffusion modeling (DDM) to analyze decision-making. Our findings reveal that the expectation of bias increases caution in decision-making as well as heightened participant sensitivity to information. Intriguingly, individuals were more likely to perceive bias against female loan applicants, even when no actual bias was present. These results highlight the complex interplay between human judgment and algorithmic decision-making, suggesting that societal awareness of real-world disparities shapes perceptions of algorithm bias.