Anthropomorphized chatbots in mental health applications

Abstract

The number of people suffering from mental health disorders is steadily rising as a result of growing social and economic inequality, ongoing political conflict, and, not least, the COVID 19 pandemic. The rapid progress of artificial intelligence, and within it chatbots, presents an opportunity to address these deficiencies by reducing treatment barriers and providing economic benefits to service providers and consumers. To assure the effectiveness of chatbots in psychological health applications, they have to be accepted by users. A chatbot’s acceptance in mental health interventions is influenced by the benefits of intelligent machines, their expectation of nonjudgmental and unbiased support, and the effect of stigma on trust and belief in healthcare. Based on these insights, the experimental study examines whether users of psychological health apps more readily accept chatbots as opposed to physical health apps. Furthermore, the humanization of chatbots is a proven tool to enhance the quality of interaction with users. Thus, this dissertation additionally aims to investigate if a humanized chatbot entity affects their acceptance in the context of mental health apps.The results suggest that chatbots are more widely accepted in mental health applications compared to physical health applications. Moreover, the findings lead to the recommendation to implement humanized entities in chatbots within mental health applications. The results provide a rationale for conducting additional research to investigate the subject in greater depth. Due to the continuous development of AI, the utilization of chatbots in mental health care should be investigated continuously.

Date of Award	28 Jun 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Sofia Jacinto (Supervisor)