Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 25, 2025

Project-Based Learning Guidelines for Health Sciences Students: An Analysis with Data Mining and Qualitative Techniques
Published on: December 9, 2022
The Effects of Health Care Chatbot Personas With Different Social Roles on the Client-Chatbot Bond and Usage
Marcia Nißen1, Dominik Rüegger1,2, Mirjam Stieger3,4,5
1Centre for Digital Health Interventions, Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Chatbot social roles impact user connection, with younger users preferring distant roles and older users preferring closer ones. Allowing users to choose a chatbot
Area of Science:
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Digital Health
- Psychology
Background:
- The working alliance, crucial for treatment success, can be influenced by client-chatbot relationships.
- Clients form affective bonds with chatbots, but research on how chatbot social roles affect this bond is limited.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how chatbot social roles, defined by interpersonal closeness, affect client experiences and affective bonds.
- To examine the influence of user characteristics (age, gender) and choice of chatbot role on these effects.
Main Methods:
- Developed a design codebook for chatbot social roles (institution, expert, peer, dialogical self).
- Manipulated a healthcare chatbot's persona in a web-based study with 251 participants.
- Compared effects on affective bond and usage intentions between random assignment (no choice) and free choice of persona.
Main Results:
- Chatbot persona main effect was insignificant, but gender and age significantly influenced outcomes.
- Younger participants preferred distant roles (expert, institution); older participants preferred closer roles (peer, dialogical self).
- Free choice of persona significantly enhanced perceptions, particularly for the peer chatbot.
Conclusions:
- Tailoring chatbot social roles based on user demographics can improve client experience and behavioral intentions.
- Allowing users to freely choose chatbot personas offers significant benefits for user perception and engagement.
Related Concept Videos
Social Scripts
Stereotype Content Model
Relationship Formation
Role-Based Identity
Models of Health Promotion and Illness Prevention I
The health belief model (HBM) attempts to predict health-related behavior in specific belief patterns. According to the HBM, a person's...
Models of Health Promotion and Illness Prevention II
The agent-host-environment model states that disease results...

