Hello, everyone, my name is Jin Chen, I am a Ph.D. student from the college of communications
at Penn State. In this video, I am going to present a study that I did with my colleagues.
In this study, we explored the individuation effects of AI vs. Human doctors on user experience.
Advances in artificial intelligence are transforming many areas, including healthcare
Despite the benefits, patients are reluctant to embrace medical AI, because they believe
medical AI cannot consider their unique characteristics nor interact with them socially
In patient counseling, individuation is a process of recognizing patient’s uniqueness
and differentiating them from other patients.
Given this, we raise the question, whether automated individuation can address patients’
concerns increase their adoption of medical AI?
From the CASA paradigm, we know that individuals have a natural tendency to apply social rules
to machines
Individuation can demonstrate that the doctor acquires the interpersonal knowledge
to respond uniquely to the patients, thus increase patients' trust and affect.
On the other hand, Uncanny valley suggest that machines are unnerving when people perceive
a humanlike mind in machines
Furthermore, when receiving unsolicited personalized information, people have
greater privacy concerns
These privacy concerns decreased users’ satisfaction and adoption of e-health services
Since Individuation involves using patients’ unique information, it may cause
feelings of greater intrusion into their privacy
To figure out the effects of doctor identity and individuation on user experience, we conducted
an online experimental study. we designed 5 health chatbots modeled after
the CDC covid self-check bot. And this is a two-phase study
In phase 1, participants filled in a questionnaire
then they were randomly assigned to chat with an AI, AI-assisted human, or human doctor. then
we pumped the phase1 data into phase 2 chatbots. In phase 2, participants were randomly assigned
to individuating or non-individuating conditions. They had a second chat and then complete the
final questionnaire.
The resulting sample is 212, 68.2% of the participants were women, the average age was
about 39
Our results showed that participants in the individuation condition perceived the level
of individuation to be significantly higher than those who were in the non-individuation
condition.
However, 78% of participants in the human doctor condition thought they interacted with
an AI doctor.
Given this, we ran two separate analyses using the manipulated and perceived doctor identity
respectively.
The analysis using manipulated doctor identity showed that: patient compliance was higher
when human and AI-assisted human doctors differentiated the patient but were lower when
AI doctors did the same. The reverse pattern was found for perceived intrusiveness.
The analysis using perceived doctor identity showed an interaction effect of doctor identity
and individuation on patient compliance; but not on perceived intrusiveness; Instead, we
found a moderated mediation effect which suggested that:
compared to the AI doctor and AI-assisted human doctor, when the human doctor did not
differentiate the patient from others, participants perceived greater intrusiveness,
and then lower compliance.
majority of participants in the human doctor condition thought that they interacted
with an AI
This could be caused by our chatbot design, we used repetitive messaging in two phases,
Our results showed that individuation from a human doctor is appreciated while
that from an AI doctor is perceived as intrusive and unappreciated.
Though our attempt at infusing individuation in healthcare chatbots did not produce desired
outcomes, our findings have several design implications.
In terms of healthcare chatbots, designers could implement stronger visual cues to convey
the humanness of the doctor
For bot-human hybrid design, the avatar should change accordingly to help clarify the source
of the messages.
For human doctors who use medical chat interfaces, they should make greater efforts to show they
are human such as avoiding repetitive responses
Though digital individuation is premature to scale, it could be built into the chat
interface controlled and utilized by human doctors
Thanks for watching this video, please feel free to contact us if you have questions.