A natural conversational interface that allows longitudinal symptom tracking would be extremely valuable in health wellness applications. However, the task of designing emotionally-aware agents for behavior change is still poorly understood. In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of an emotion-aware chatbot that conducts experience sampling in an empathetic manner. We evaluate it through a human-subject experiment with N=39 participants over the course of a week. Our results show that extraverts preferred the emotion-aware chatbot significantly more than introverts. Also, participants reported a higher percentage of positive mood reports when interacting with the empathetic bot. Finally, we provide guidelines for the design of emotion-aware chatbots for potential use in mHealth contexts.
@cite_30: Two studies explored relations between positive reminiscing and emotional experience – a survey of naturally occurring reminiscence (Study 1) and a field experiment testing the affective consequences of two styles of reminiscing (Study 2). In Study 1, frequency of positive reminiscing predicted perceived ability to enjoy life, and students who reminisced using cognitive imagery reported a greater ability to savor positive events than those who reminisced using memorabilia. In Study 2, students were randomly assigned either to reminisce about pleasant memories using cognitive imagery, reminisce about pleasant memories using memorabilia, or think about current concerns (control condition) for 10 min twice daily for a week. Both reminiscence groups reported greater increases in the percent of time they felt happy over the past week than the control group; and happiness increased more in the cognitive imagery group than in the memorabilia group.
While these efforts have tried to address the issue of user engagement with ESM, the tone of delivery of ESM and its implications are not well studied. Specifically, ESM goes beyond being purely a method for capturing data. It provides a means for reflecting on one's past more objectively, which has the potential to improve psychological wellbeing and personal growth @cite_30 . ESM is widely used in applications for improving mental health and wellbeing. Recently, personal assistants, chatbots, and virtual assistants (VAs) are are being used more often for conducting experience sampling. Therefore, it becomes imperative to study the characteristics of such an agent delivering ESM.