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It is essential that users understand how algorithmic decisions are made, as we increasingly delegate important decisions to intelligent systems. Prior work has often taken a techno-centric approach, focusing on new computational techniques to support transparency. In contrast, this article employs empirical methods to better understand user reactions to transparent systems to motivate user-centric designs for transparent systems. We assess user reactions to transparency feedback in four studies of an emotional analytics system. In Study 1, users anticipated that a transparent system would perform better but unexpectedly retracted this evaluation after experience with the system. Study 2 offers an explanation for this paradox by showing that the benefits of transparency are context dependent. On the one hand, transparency can help users form a model of the underlying algorithm's operation. On the other hand …