It's only a computer: Virtual humans increase willingness to disclose

By Gale M. Lucas, Jonathan Gratch, Aisha King, Louis-philippe Morency. Computers in Human Behavior, 2014

851 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We provide empirical evidence that virtual humans increase willingness to disclose.We frame a virtual human interviewer as computer or human during health screenings.Framing the interviewer as computer lowers evaluation fears and impression management.Framing as a computer increases expressed sadness and objectively-rated disclosure. Research has begun to explore the use of virtual humans (VHs) in clinical interviews (Bickmore, Gruber, & Picard, 2005). When designed as supportive and "safe" interaction partners, VHs may improve such screenings by increasing willingness to disclose information (Gratch, Wang, Gerten, & Fast, 2007). In health and mental health contexts, patients are often reluctant to respond honestly. In the context of health-screening interviews, we report a study in which participants interacted with a VH interviewer and were led to believe that the VH was controlled by either humans or automation. As predicted, compared to those who believed they were interacting with a human operator, participants who believed they were interacting with a computer reported lower fear of self-disclosure, lower impression management, displayed their sadness more intensely, and were rated by observers as more willing to disclose. These results suggest that automated VHs can help overcome a significant barrier to obtaining truthful patient information.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/34e2cb7a4fef0651fb5c0a120c8e70ebab9f0749

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Applied Psychology

In Social Psychology

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing in Mental Health: Systematic Review (2021, neutral): “In addition, Lucas et al [51] demonstrated through a clinical trial that when people believed they were interacting with a computer rather than an actual clinician, they reported less fear of self-disclosure, reported reduced impression management behaviors, experienced more ease in expressing the…”
Effectiveness of a chatbot for eating disorders prevention: A randomized clinical trial. (2021, background): “Further, research has shown chatbots encourage honest disclosure (Lucas, Gratch, King, & Morency, 2014).”
"I Hear You, I Feel You": Encouraging Deep Self-disclosure through a Chatbot (2020, background): “, during interviews, which can render them more willing to self-disclose [33, 32].”
Chatbot for Health Care and Oncology Applications Using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Systematic Review (2021, neutral): “Chatbots used for psychological support hold great potential, as individuals are more comfortable disclosing personal information when no judgments are formed, even if users could still discriminate their responses from that of humans [82,85].”
Artificial Intelligence for Mental Healthcare: Clinical Applications, Barriers, Facilitators, and Artificial Wisdom (2021, background): “One study found that individuals were more forthcoming disclosing sensitive information with a computer system than with a person (57).”
The digital revolution and its impact on mental health care. (2019, background): “…by a computer allowed participants to feel as though their responses were not being judged by another human; when individuals fear of judgement is strong, they begin to engage in impression management and as a result withhold information that might threaten their reputation (Lucas et al., 2014).”
Using Psychological Artificial Intelligence (Tess) to Relieve Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety: Randomized Controlled Trial (2018, background): “Assessing emotion through facial expressions [38,39] appears unreliable because of the overlap of expressive characteristics among seemingly basic emotions, resulting in the taxonomy of facial expressions not adequately describing the taxonomy of emotions [15].”
Machine Heuristic: When We Trust Computers More than Humans with Our Personal Information (2019, background): “Studies have shown that users are quite willing to reveal personal information to such chatbots [16]; in fact, users are more honest and feel more comfortable revealing sensitive information to virtual agents than to humans because these agents would not judge them [22].”
The Distress Analysis Interview Corpus of human and computer interviews (2014, background): “…of framing the character as human-controlled or autonomous showed that participants felt lower fear of negative evaluation and engaged in less impression management when the character was framed as autonomous than when it was framed as human-controlled (Gratch et al., 2014b; Gratch et al., 2014a).”
Psychological, Relational, and Emotional Effects of Self-Disclosure After Conversations With a Chatbot (2018, background): “Disclosure intimacy, however, may increase when the partner is a computerized agent rather than another person, because individuals know that computers cannot judge them (Lucas et al., 2014).”
My Chatbot Companion - a Study of Human-Chatbot Relationships (2021, background): “These findings echo conclusions drawn in earlier research, where chatbot users may find the threshold for sharing personal troubles or issues to be lower with a machine than with a human conversational partner (Lucas et al., 2014).”