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Chatbot as an emergency exist: Mediated empathy for resilience via human-AI interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic

As a global health crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic has also made heavy mental and emotional tolls become shared experiences of global communities, especially among females who were affected more by the pandemic than males for anxiety and depression. By connecting multiple facets of empathy as key mech...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Jiang, Qiaolei, Zhang, Yadi, Pian, Wenjing
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9428597/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36059428
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2022.103074
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author Jiang, Qiaolei
Zhang, Yadi
Pian, Wenjing
author_facet Jiang, Qiaolei
Zhang, Yadi
Pian, Wenjing
author_sort Jiang, Qiaolei
collection PubMed
description As a global health crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic has also made heavy mental and emotional tolls become shared experiences of global communities, especially among females who were affected more by the pandemic than males for anxiety and depression. By connecting multiple facets of empathy as key mechanisms of information processing with the communication theory of resilience, the present study examines human-AI interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to understand digitally mediated empathy and how the intertwining of empathic and communicative processes of resilience works as coping strategies for COVID-19 disruption. Mixed methods were adopted to explore the using experiences and effects of Replika, a chatbot companion powered by AI, with ethnographic research, in-depth interviews, and grounded theory-based analysis. Findings of this research extend empathy theories from interpersonal communication to human-AI interactions and show five types of digitally mediated empathy among Chinese female Replika users with varying degrees of cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and empathic response involved in the information processing processes, i.e., companion buddy, responsive diary, emotion-handling program, electronic pet, and tool for venting. When processing information obtained from AI and collaborative interactions with the AI chatbot, multiple facets of mediated empathy become unexpected pathways to resilience and enhance users’ well-being. This study fills the research gap by exploring empathy and resilience processes in human-AI interactions. Practical implications, especially for increasing individuals’ psychological resilience as an important component of global recovery from the pandemic, suggestions for future chatbot design, and future research directions are also discussed.
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spelling pubmed-94285972022-08-31 Chatbot as an emergency exist: Mediated empathy for resilience via human-AI interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic Jiang, Qiaolei Zhang, Yadi Pian, Wenjing Inf Process Manag Article As a global health crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic has also made heavy mental and emotional tolls become shared experiences of global communities, especially among females who were affected more by the pandemic than males for anxiety and depression. By connecting multiple facets of empathy as key mechanisms of information processing with the communication theory of resilience, the present study examines human-AI interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to understand digitally mediated empathy and how the intertwining of empathic and communicative processes of resilience works as coping strategies for COVID-19 disruption. Mixed methods were adopted to explore the using experiences and effects of Replika, a chatbot companion powered by AI, with ethnographic research, in-depth interviews, and grounded theory-based analysis. Findings of this research extend empathy theories from interpersonal communication to human-AI interactions and show five types of digitally mediated empathy among Chinese female Replika users with varying degrees of cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and empathic response involved in the information processing processes, i.e., companion buddy, responsive diary, emotion-handling program, electronic pet, and tool for venting. When processing information obtained from AI and collaborative interactions with the AI chatbot, multiple facets of mediated empathy become unexpected pathways to resilience and enhance users’ well-being. This study fills the research gap by exploring empathy and resilience processes in human-AI interactions. Practical implications, especially for increasing individuals’ psychological resilience as an important component of global recovery from the pandemic, suggestions for future chatbot design, and future research directions are also discussed. Elsevier Ltd. 2022-11 2022-08-31 /pmc/articles/PMC9428597/ /pubmed/36059428 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2022.103074 Text en © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Jiang, Qiaolei
Zhang, Yadi
Pian, Wenjing
Chatbot as an emergency exist: Mediated empathy for resilience via human-AI interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic
title Chatbot as an emergency exist: Mediated empathy for resilience via human-AI interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_full Chatbot as an emergency exist: Mediated empathy for resilience via human-AI interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_fullStr Chatbot as an emergency exist: Mediated empathy for resilience via human-AI interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Chatbot as an emergency exist: Mediated empathy for resilience via human-AI interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_short Chatbot as an emergency exist: Mediated empathy for resilience via human-AI interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_sort chatbot as an emergency exist: mediated empathy for resilience via human-ai interaction during the covid-19 pandemic
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9428597/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36059428
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2022.103074
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