Clients’ Perception And Experience In "AI" Counseling

"Can AI replace humans?" and "What influence will the development of social AI bring to the relationship between people?" have become a hot topic of discussion.Being applied in a wide range of industries,what role will artificial intelligence(AI)play in the future counseling?The study,controlling the impact of science and technology,intends to explore the difference of counseling process and outcome when a client thinks the counselor is a human or an AI,so as to create a better understanding of human’s perception for AI at the psychological aspect and of the relationship between humans and AI,and also to provide a new view for understanding the counseling between people.Select 19 college students with counseling motivation,without crisis,mental illness and counseling experience.The clients were randomly assigned to the Human Group(they were told the counselor is a human),and the AI Group(they were told the counselor is an AI)for a fifty-minute text-based counseling.In fact,counselors of the two groups were both humans,who have received the train of humanistic psychology and whose counseling skills are at the same level,and would be demand to only give responsive listening during the process of counseling.A client was randomly assigned to a counselor,and the counselor didn’t know which group the client belonged to.To ensure the subjects in the AI Group believed the counselors were AI,the study recruited subjects in the name of "instant text-based online counseling",and refused those keen on AI.Before the experiment,the subjects were showed materials(self-made)about the development and current status of AI counseling;then WeChat Official Account was used to conduct counseling;at last,the clients were asked to complete SRS,IOS,ORS(both before and after the counseling),SEQ and an interview with the method of Interpersonal process recall(IPR).Apply both qualitative and quantitative methods.Make a qualitative analysis on the interview,and make a quantitative analysis on the scale results,as well as use linguistic inquiry and word count(LIWC)to compare the two group’s verbatim transcription of counseling.Quantitative analysis shows:(1)AI group consultation was effective and had no significant difference with human group;(2)The AI group did not differ significantly from the human group in terms of consultation depth,fluency,and consultants’ intimacy and counseling relationships;(3)The use of friends,negative words,connective words,and excluded words in the verbatim manuscripts of the AI group were less than the human group and there was no significant difference in the use of emotional words and personal pronouns;Qualitative analysis shows:(1)AI group clients expected low and more tolerant counselors;(2)The AI group had an emotional experience during the consultation process and the consulting relationship also changed;(3)Clients in the AI group perceived stronger feelings of pattern,less communication,and less concern during consultation;(4)The AI group also had the effect of promoting thinking,comprehension,and providing emotional support;(5)The AI group emphasized more on the effects of talks;(6)The AI group tended to believe that the emotional support received was insufficient in relation to the human group who considered feedback,suggestions and self-disclosure inadequate.