Enactive mastery experience improves attitudes towards digital technology via self-efficacy – a pre-registered quasi-experiment

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to improve attitudes towards digital technology. To this end, we compared two ways of introducing technology: an enactive mastery versus a vicarious experience. The former aimed at improving employees’ self-efficacy to use a robotic technology and, thereby, their attitudes towards it. We examined three attitude dimensions that are relevant when implementing new technology: (1) technology enthusiasm, (2) resistance to change, and (3) job insecurity. We also tested for self-efficacy as mediator between experience and attitudes. The results of the pre-registered quasi-experiment with operators working in the automotive sector (N = 106) supported our hypothesis: Enactive mastery experience, in which workers actively engaged with the technology, led to a higher technology enthusiasm as compared to vicarious experience. This effect was explained by an increase in self-efficacy. Additional analyses revealed that enactive mastery experience also led to lower resistance to change, but not to lower job insecurity. The findings highlight how organisations can apply a simple, yet effective strategy to successfully implement technology at work and motivate employees to use it. They also reveal self-efficacy as the underlying psychological mechanism of enactive mastery, thereby providing an important starting point for designing interventions in organisations.