ArticleInformation processing & management2022
Chatbot as an emergency exist: Mediated empathy for resilience via human-AI interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Article in Information processing & management, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 132 citations in OpenAlex.
- Empathic Conversational Agent Platform Designs and Their Evaluation in the Context of Mental Health: Systematic Review.JMIR mental health · 2024Pooled it
- Trust-driven healthy engagement with conversational AI for mental health support in young adults: a mixed methods study.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- AI chatbots for health information seeking among Chinese patients with precancerous ENT lesions: a descriptive qualitative study.BMJ open · 2026Article
- The comfort paradox in emotional AI: how AI-mediated anxiety regulation may foster psychological dependence.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- 'She lifted me up': kinship construction in human-AI resilient communication among Chinese users.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Effects of attractions and social attributes on peoples' usage intention and media dependence towards chatbot: The mediating role of parasocial interaction and emotional support.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Expert and Interdisciplinary Analysis of AI-Driven Chatbots for Mental Health Support: Mixed Methods Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Demand analysis of transitional care for patients undergoing minimally invasive cardiac interventions with AI-driven solutions: a mixed-methods approach.BMC nursing · 2025Article
- The compassion illusion: Can artificial empathy ever be emotionally authentic?Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Pathways of long-term AI virtual companion app use on users' attachment emotions: a case study of Chinese users.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Connecting self-esteem to problematic AI chatbot use: the multiple mediating roles of positive and negative psychological states.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- "He is my savior, my guiding light in the dark": imagination and domestication in Chinese women's romantic relationships with AI companions.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Emotional AI and the rise of pseudo-intimacy: are we trading authenticity for algorithmic affection?Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Social skills development in children aged 4-8 years.PloS one · 2025Article
- The promises and challenges of AI-based chatbots in language education through the lens of learner emotions.Heliyon · 2024Review
- A trial of a chat service for patients and their family members in an emergency department.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- The acceptability and effectiveness of artificial intelligence-based chatbot for hypertensive patients in community: protocol for a mixed-methods study.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Digital clinical empathy in a live chat: multiple findings from a formative qualitative study and usability tests.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- An Integrative Survey on Mental Health Conversational Agents to Bridge Computer Science and Medical Perspectives.Proceedings of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing. Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing · 2023Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.