4 ergonomics in design | October 2017 C ontrolled flight into terrain (CFIT) has historically been a significant problem within the Air Force (Richardson, Eger, & Hamilton, 2015). CFIT occurs when a healthy aircraft collides with terrain because the pilot is unaware of or unable to avoid the danger due to his or her spatial disorientation (which is a cognitive precur- sor to CFIT) or because of g-force-induced loss of consciousness (GLOC). The Auto- matic Ground Collision Avoidance System (Auto-GCAS) was developed to reduce CFIT among the F-16 community, and since its fielding in 2014, Auto-GCAS has accounted for four operational saves. The superb opera- tional track record of the system has boosted pilot trust of Auto-GCAS (Ho et al., in press), yet concerns remain, in that pilots need to avoid complacency in relation to Auto-GCAS because complacency could result in misuse of the system. In this article, we examine pilot experi- ence as a proxy for studying generational issues in pilot trust and complacency potential in a sample of Air Force F-16 pilots. The topic of generational issues in trust in automation is explored, along with survey data from the operational community. GENERATIONAL INFLUENCES ON TRUST Trust represents the belief that an agent will help an individual achieve her or his goals in a situation in which there is uncer- tainty and vulnerability (Lee & See, 2004); thus trust is a person’s belief in relation to a system. There are two important distinctions to be made conceptually. First, trust is dis- tinct from one’s confidence, which will be heavily influenced by one’s skills and prefer- ences for manual control. Second, trust is distinct from complacency, in the sense that trust is a psychological intention to be vul- nerable, and complacency is a behavioral manifestation related to this willingness to be vulnerable and is characterized by exces- sive reliance behaviors or behavioral inten- tions. Hoff and Bashir (2015) conducted a comprehensive review of the trust-in- automation literature and found three classes of trust antecedents: human factors, situ- ational factors, and learned trust factors. Here we will focus on an example of a human factor; namely, pilot experience. Pilot trust of Auto-GCAS has been examined in previous research (see Ho et al., in press; Lyons, Ho, Fergueson, et al., 2016; Lyons, Ho, Koltai, et al., 2016). These studies have shown that many of the trust anteced- ents discussed by Hoff and Bashir (2015) hold up in the context of Auto-GCAS. Trust is pertinent to the Auto-GCAS platform because it is an automated system that takes control away from the pilot (albeit briefly) and thus is a good exemplar for studying trust in automation in a real-world military context. Second, pilots have the option of turning the system off and not using it, which would negate its operational effectiveness. Third, it is possible that if pilots’ trust of the system is too high, they can misuse the system and evidence unrealistic trust beliefs – such as that “Auto-GCAS will always save them” – with the potential result of more aggressive flight maneuvers. Finally, the real-world nature of Auto-GCAS and the fact that it influences life-and-death actions suggest that it operates in a context with high potential vulnerability (a key ingredient for trust feature FEATURE AT A GLANCE: We examined F-16 pilots’ trust of the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System (Auto-GCAS), an automated system fielded on the F-16 to reduce the occur- rence of controlled flight into terrain. We looked at the impact of experience (i.e., number of flight hours) as a predictor of trust perceptions and compla- cency potential among pilots. We expected that novice pilots would report higher trust and greater potential for complacency in relation to Auto-GCAS, which was shown to be partly true. Although novice pilots, compared with experienced pilots, reported equivalent trust perceptions, they also reported greater compla- cency potential. KEYWORDS: trust in automation, automation reliance, pilot, novice, military, F- 16, Auto-GCAS, CFIT, GLOC, flight alarms, spatial disorientation 716612ERG XX X 10.1177/1064804617716612ergonomics in designergonomics in design research-article 2017 Comparing Trust in Auto-GCAS Between Experienced and Novice Air Force Pilots By Joseph B. Lyons, Nhut T. Ho, Anna Lee Van Abel, Lauren C. Hoffmann, Garrett G. Sadler, William E. Fergueson, Michelle A. Grigsby, & Mark Wilkins This examination of how pilots place their trust in – and are complacent with – the Automatic Ground Collision Warning System reveals important insights for training younger pilots.