Promoting wellbeing with sunny, a chatbot that facilitates positive messages within social groups
Name
Sunny_LateBreakingWork.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
1.18 MB
Format
Unknown
Checksum (MD5)
a7a74ba2c3749a92b81a90dec7b2d8dc
Author(s)
Narain, Jaya
Quach, Tina
Davey, Monique
Park, Hae Won
Breazeal, Cynthia Lynn
Picard, Rosalind W.
Date Issued
April 2020
Journal
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
Publisher
ACM
Citation
Narain, J, Quach, T, Davey, M, Park, HW, Breazeal, C et al. 2020. "Promoting wellbeing with sunny, a chatbot that facilitates positive messages within social groups." Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
© 2020 Owner/Author. A Facebook Messenger chatbot, Sunny, was designed and deployed to promote positive social connections and enhance psychological wellbeing. A 10-day study was conducted with three pre-existing social groups of four members each in control (n=12) and experimental groups (n=12). Both groups completed initial assessments and daily reports, and the experimental groups interacted with Sunny. Exit interviews indicated three key themes: 1) Sunny prompted self-reflection, boosting participants' senses of self-worth and the depth of their relationships, 2) using Sunny encouraged participants to send heartfelt messages they would not have shared otherwise, 3) participants enjoyed accessing positive messages "on-demand". Experimental groups showed an average increase in psychological wellbeing of 1.73 (std = 6.08), compared to 0.5 (std = 5.94) in control. Our results suggest that an AI-based chatbot like Sunny could provide preventative care, promoting strong social connections and psychological wellbeing.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1145/3334480.3383062
