ArticleCurrent psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.)2023
Human vs. machine-like representation in chatbot mental health counseling: the serial mediation of psychological distance and trust on compliance intention.
Article in Current psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.), 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effectiveness of Topic-Based Chatbots on Mental Health Self-Care and Mental Well-Being: Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Trial
- Counselor type (Human/AI) and consultation intention: a moderated mediation model of trust and psychological counseling scenarios.BMC psychology · 2025Trial
- Effects of promotional and preventive framing strategies in AI generated content on neural responses and trust.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- AI Chatbot Anthropomorphism and Consumer Decision-Making: A Dual-Pathway Calibration Model.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Trust-driven healthy engagement with conversational AI for mental health support in young adults: a mixed methods study.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Adolescent Perceptions of an Online Safety Chatbot: Survey Study.JMIR human factors · 2026Article
- Trusting and staying with AI doctors: cognitive and emotional pathways driving continuance intention toward AI healthcare chatbots.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Perceived control and immersion in AI chatbot interaction: a psychological distance perspective.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Charting the evolution of artificial intelligence mental health chatbots from rule-based systems to large language models: a systematic review.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2025Article
- Designing Artificial Intelligence-Powered Health Care Assistants to Reach Vulnerable Populations: A Discrete Choice Experiment Among South African University Students.Mayo Clinic proceedings. Digital health · 2025Article
- The effects of warning design features on risk perception and performance in remote emergency response.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Driving Online Healthcare Growth Amid the Digital Divide: How Trust in Professional Signals from Doctor Biographies Shapes Patient Decisions.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The Impact of Chatbot Response Strategies and Emojis Usage on Customers' Purchase Intention: The Mediating Roles of Psychological Distance and Performance Expectancy.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Alter egos alter engagement: perspective-taking can improve disclosure quantity and depth to AI chatbots in promoting mental wellbeing.Frontiers in digital health · 2025Article
- Who is more trustworthy? The influence mechanism of AI vs. human doctor triage on user trust: testing the mediating effect of psychological distance, and a multiple moderating effects analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Evaluating the Potential and Pitfalls of AI-Powered Conversational Agents as Humanlike Virtual Health Carers in the Remote Management of Noncommunicable Diseases: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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3 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This study examined a serial mediation mechanism to test the effect of chatbots' human representation on the intention to comply with health recommendations through psychological distance and trust towards the chatbot counselor. The sample of the study comprised 385 adults from the USA. Two artificial intelligence chatbots either with human or machine-like representation were developed. Participants had a short conversation with either of the chatbots to simulate an online mental health counseling session and reported their experience in an online survey. The results showed that participants in the human representation condition reported a higher intention to comply with chatbot-generated mental health recommendations than those in the machine-like representation condition. Furthermore, the results supported that both psychological distance and perceived trust towards the chatbot mediated the relationship between human representation and compliance intention, respectively. The serial mediation through psychological distance and trust in the relationship between human representation and compliance intention was also supported. These findings provide practical guidance for healthcare chatbot developers and theoretical implications for human-computer interaction research.
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