Measuring the Effect of Mental Health Chatbot Personality on User Engagement

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence is seen as humanity’s current best bet to solve the looming crisis in healthcare. Conversational Agents, or chatbots, rely on advances in AI and are increasingly investigated in the context of digital mental health care. Given how they are end-user-facing and interactive communication tools, the user engagement felt when interacting with the bots is a critical consideration. In this work, we examine the effects of chatbot personalities on the experienced user engagement with the bot. We employed personalities that rely on the Big-5 Personality Theory. Among other findings, our quantitative results indicate that a highly conscientious chatbot is likely to foster the highest user engagement. Our qualitative and content analysis also reveals desired and undesired personality features for future mental health chatbots. We discuss our findings in light of digital mental health and propose novel research directions.