AI versus humans as authority figures: Evidence from a rule-compliance experiment

Simon Gaechter (), Dominik Suri and Sebastian Kube ()
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Simon Gaechter: University of Nottingham
Dominik Suri: University of Bonn
Sebastian Kube: University of Bonn

No 2026-02, Discussion Papers from The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham

Abstract: AI-driven systems are rapidly moving from decision support to directing human behavior through rules, recommendations, and compliance requests. This shift expands everyday human–AI interaction and raises the possibility that AI may function as an authority figure. However, the behavioral consequences of AI as an authority figure remain poorly understood. We investigate whether individuals differ in their willingness to comply with arbitrary rules depending on whether these rules are attributed to an AI agent (ChatGPT) or to a fellow human. In a between-subject design, 977 US Prolific users completed the coins task: they could earn a monetary payoff by stopping the disappearance of coins at any time, but a rule instructed them to wait for a signal before doing so. There are no conventional reasons to follow this rule: complying is costly and nobody is harmed by non-compliance. Despite this, we find high rule-following rates: 64.3% followed the rule set by ChatGPT and 63.9% complied with the human-set rule. Descriptive and normative beliefs about rule following, aswell as compliance conditional on these beliefs, are also largely unaffected by the rule’s origin. However, subjective social closeness to the rule setter significantly predicts how participants condition their behavior on social expectations: when participants perceive the rule setter as subjectively closer, conditional compliance is higher and associated beliefs are stronger, irrespective of whether the rule setter is human or AI.

Keywords: artificial intelligence; AI-human interaction; ChatGPT; rule-following; coins task; CRISP framework; social expectations; conditional rule conformity; social closeness; IOS11; online experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-soc
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