36 Questions to Loving a Chatbot: Are People Willing to Self-disclose to a Chatbot?

The aim of the current study was to determine if people are willing to self-disclose to a chatbot to the same extent as to a human interlocutor and to examine the role of four underlying processes, namely trust, social presence, anonymity, and shame. These aims were tested among 150 participants by means of an experiment with three conditions (chatbot, a human via CMC, or a human face-to-face). In all conditions, participants were asked nine questions to stimulate self-disclosure, which varied in terms of intimacy. The results revealed that participants had the most trust in a face-to-face interaction partner and felt the most social presence face-to-face. However, they felt most anonymous in the chatbot condition. Both trust and anonymity significantly mediated the effect of condition on self-disclosure. The findings of this study have important implications for the implementation of social chatbots for psychotherapy to support people with mental health problems.