Should Machines Express Sympathy and Empathy? Experiments with a Health Advice Chatbot

By MA Bingjie Liu, PhD S. Shyam Sundar. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 2018

381 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract When we ask a chatbot for advice about a personal problem, should it simply provide informational support and refrain from offering emotional support? Or, should it show sympathy and empathize with our situation? Although expression of caring and understanding is valued in supportive human communications, do we want the same from a chatbot, or do we simply reject it due to its artificiality and uncanniness? To answer this question, we conducted two experiments with a chatbot providing online medical information advice about a sensitive personal issue. In Study 1, participants (N = 158) simply read a dialogue between a chatbot and a human user. In Study 2, participants (N = 88) interacted with a real chatbot. We tested the effect of three types of empathic expression—sympathy, cognitive empathy, and affective empathy—on individuals' perceptions of the service and the chatbot. Data reveal that expression of sympathy and empathy is favored over unemotional provision of advice, in support of the Computers are Social Actors (CASA) paradigm. This is particularly true for users who are initially skeptical about machines possessing social cognitive capabilities. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications are discussed.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9c4e7f280264f7377e5cdcd1a290d61bdbca5f34

How researchers see this paper

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In Artificial Intelligence

1. Tobias Kowatsch
2. Shafiq R. Joty
3. Jiangen He
4. Rifat A. Atun
5. Yuting Liao
6. Linnea Laestadius

In Social Psychology

1. Jiangen He
2. Yuting Liao

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Tobias Kowatsch
2. Jiangen He
3. Yuting Liao
4. Yin Leng Theng
5. Linnea Laestadius

Citations in the corpus

• Conversational Agents in Health Care: Scoping Review and Conceptual Analysis (2020, methodology): “Non–disease-specific conversational agents were used as a health information advisor [83] and pediatric generic medicine consultant [65].”
• Chatbot for Health Care and Oncology Applications Using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Systematic Review (2021, neutral): “The first chatbot was designed for individuals with psychological issues [9]; however, they continue to be used for emotional support and psychiatric counseling with their ability to express sympathy and empathy [81].”
• Racial mirroring effects on human-agent interaction in psychotherapeutic conversations (2020, background): “, managing conflicts [54]] and empathy[38]) and personality [43].”
• Too human and not human enough: A grounded theory analysis of mental health harms from emotional dependence on the social chatbot Replika (2022, background): “Given societal factors that will likely continue uptake of SCs, we suggest ways they can be designed to continue supporting mental health while mitigating emotional dependence.”