Psychological, Relational, and Emotional Effects of Self-Disclosure After Conversations With a Chatbot

By A. Ho, J. Hancock, Adam S. Miner. Journal of Communications, 2018

539 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Disclosing personal information to another person has beneficial emotional, relational, and psychological outcomes. When disclosers believe they are interacting with a computer instead of another person, such as a chatbot that can simulate human-to-human conversation, outcomes may be undermined, enhanced, or equivalent. Our experiment examined downstream effects after emotional versus factual disclosures in conversations with a supposed chatbot or person. The effects of emotional disclosure were equivalent whether participants thought they were disclosing to a chatbot or to a person. This study advances current understanding of disclosure and whether its impact is altered by technology, providing support for media equivalency as a primary mechanism for the consequences of disclosing to a chatbot.

Subfields: Literature and Literary Theory, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bd78a17cf06816b239a51ad8bf2d859fcde12090

How researchers see this paper

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

In Literature and Literary Theory

In Social Psychology

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Building a Stronger CASA: Extending the Computers Are Social Actors Paradigm (2020, background): “Ho et al. (2018) found that the positive effects of interpersonal emotional disclosure applied to interactions with perceived chatbots.”
Acceptability of artificial intelligence (AI)-led chatbot services in healthcare: A mixed-methods study (2019, result): “This is in line with previous research showing that users might be as likely to disclose emotional and factual information to a chatbot as they do to a human partner.(31) The perceived understanding, disclosure intimacy and cognitive reappraisal were similar in conversations conducted with chatbots ”
My Chatbot Companion - a Study of Human-Chatbot Relationships (2021, background): “Relationships with social chatbots may potentially impact users ’ affective and social processes as well as their expectations from a relationship (Ho et al., 2018).”
How Should My Chatbot Interact? A Survey on Social Characteristics in Human–Chatbot Interaction Design (2019, background): “[Ho et al. 2018] measured users’ experience in conversations with a chatbot compared to a human partner as well as the amount of intimacy disclosure and cognitive reappraisal.”
Can Conversing with a Computer Increase Turnout? Mobilization Using Chatbot Communication (2020, background): “Experimental evidence also indicates human-to-chatbot conversations can produce emotional benefits similar to human-to-human conversations (Ho, Hancock, and Miner 2018).”