Cultivating Gratitude with a Chatbot

Abstract

Gratitude is a moral emotion that demonstrates our appreciation of altruism. In psychology, feeling grateful is linked to an increase in well-being, yet there is a lack of HCI research on if gratitude can be cultivated through and with conversational agents. We quantitatively studied whether a chatbot can increase people’s gratitude (N = 133), as well as its influence on people’s positive and negative emotions. Compared to the control condition, a chatbot that shared gratitude interventions significantly enhanced people’s gratitude and positive emotions, while lowering negative emotions. Interestingly, people’s experience of gratitude differed from other positive emotions: Simple positive emotions, like joy, can go up while reported gratitude decreases. We share qualitative observations on how gratitude can be a complex emotional experience, encompassing positive and negative emotions, such as finding relief in admitting to a chatbot about one’s sadness over friendship during the COVID-19 pandemic.