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

2018/05/30 by Annabell Ho, Annabell Suh Ho, Jeffrey T. Hancock +3 · 47 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Mental Health via Writing #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Media Influence and Health

paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/joc/jqy026

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.

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