Clinicians’ Self-Disclosure Within the Therapeutic Alliance with a Trauma-Related Disorder

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore how therapists build therapeutic alliances with their clients in trauma-based therapy using self-disclosure in the southern United States. The field of psychology benefitted significantly from a clearly defined and operationalized study that focused on the specific forms and usage of self-disclosure within the trauma-based therapeutic alliance, which advances the current research and uncovers the understanding of this potentially helpful intervention. The researcher used a case study approach and collected data using a semi-structured interview approach. These interviews were then examined using coding and the NVivo software. Theoretical coding was utilized to recognize and develop categories and patterns that emerged during the selective coding process. Relationships between the codes or themes were identified throughout the emerging theory or phenomenon. The results of the study include patients feeling less judged and more connected to the therapists that used self-disclosure as a connection tool

Therapist and Adolescent Behavior in Online Therapy

A literature review on the potential of computer-mediated communication (CMC) as a medium for conducting psychotherapy via the Internet revealed that CMC may mediate interpersonally rich interactions if participants are allowed sufficient time and repeated opportunities (anticipate future communications) to exchange information and build relationships. To examine the extent to which the process of online therapy resembles face-to-face therapy, online therapy transcripts were examined through a molecular approach and the results were compared to the extant, psychotherapy processes literature. The participants were six dyads formed by college graduate students enrolled in a clinical practicum course and their online adolescent clients. The clients were highschool freshmen and sophomores referred by their school counselors through the Gulf Coast GEAR UP Partnership Project. Trained undergraduate psychology majors coded therapist and client online behavior according to two well established and validated coding methods, the Helping Skills System (HSS) and the Client Behavior System (CBS; Hill & O’Brien, 1999). Although levels of client overall output (grammatical units) remained fairly constant throughout the course of therapy, the ratio of productive to non-productive output per session increased as a function of number of sessions. Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) methodology, the results revealed that therapist facilitating skills (approval and reassurance, restatements and rephrasing, and reflection of feelings) predicted higher client productive output, whereas interpretations and informative statements predicted lower client productive output. The results confirmed that online therapy can lead to productive therapist-client interactions and that the associations between these interactions are similar to the associations found in faceto- face therapy interactions

Seeking and Providing Social Support in Online Forums for Individuals Experiencing Depression

This thesis project investigates how individuals suffering from depression seek support, provide support, and describe experiences of stigma in an online support platform. A phronetic-iterative and constant comparative approach guided an in-depth analysis of 37 posts on a discussion board designed for individuals with depression. The findings demonstrated that individuals use online discussion forums to request support both implicitly and explicitly. In response to sought support, individuals provided informational, emotional, and network support. Finally, discussion board participants discussed social and self stigma. Despite the limitations of the study, the findings indicate the utility of online social support platforms for individuals suffering from depression and emphasize their importance in facilitating supportive communicative interactions. Keywords: depression, online discussion boards, social support, stigma

The Effects of Health Care Chatbot Personas With Different Social Roles on the Client-Chatbot Bond and Usage Intentions: Development of a Design Codebook and Web-Based Study

Background The working alliance refers to an important relationship quality between health professionals and clients that robustly links to treatment success. Recent research shows that clients can develop an affective bond with chatbots. However, few research studies have investigated whether this perceived relationship is affected by the social roles of differing closeness a chatbot can impersonate and by allowing users to choose the social role of a chatbot. Objective This study aimed at understanding how the social role of a chatbot can be expressed using a set of interpersonal closeness cues and examining how these social roles affect clients’ experiences and the development of an affective bond with the chatbot, depending on clients’ characteristics (ie, age and gender) and whether they can freely choose a chatbot’s social role. Methods Informed by the social role theory and the social response theory, we developed a design codebook for chatbots with different social roles along an interpersonal closeness continuum. Based on this codebook, we manipulated a fictitious health care chatbot to impersonate one of four distinct social roles common in health care settings—institution, expert, peer, and dialogical self—and examined effects on perceived affective bond and usage intentions in a web-based lab study. The study included a total of 251 participants, whose mean age was 41.15 (SD 13.87) years; 57.0% (143/251) of the participants were female. Participants were either randomly assigned to one of the chatbot conditions (no choice: n=202, 80.5%) or could freely choose to interact with one of these chatbot personas (free choice: n=49, 19.5%). Separate multivariate analyses of variance were performed to analyze differences (1) between the chatbot personas within the no-choice group and (2) between the no-choice and the free-choice groups. Results While the main effect of the chatbot persona on affective bond and usage intentions was insignificant (P=.87), we found differences based on participants’ demographic profiles: main effects for gender (P=.04, ηp2=0.115) and age (P<.001, ηp2=0.192) and a significant interaction effect of persona and age (P=.01, ηp2=0.102). Participants younger than 40 years reported higher scores for affective bond and usage intentions for the interpersonally more distant expert and institution chatbots; participants 40 years or older reported higher outcomes for the closer peer and dialogical-self chatbots. The option to freely choose a persona significantly benefited perceptions of the peer chatbot further (eg, free-choice group affective bond: mean 5.28, SD 0.89; no-choice group affective bond: mean 4.54, SD 1.10; P=.003, ηp2=0.117). Conclusions Manipulating a chatbot’s social role is a possible avenue for health care chatbot designers to tailor clients’ chatbot experiences using user-specific demographic factors and to improve clients’ perceptions and behavioral intentions toward the chatbot. Our results also emphasize the benefits of letting clients freely choose between chatbots

Seeking and Providing Social Support in Online Forums for Individuals Experiencing Depression

This thesis project investigates how individuals suffering from depression seek support, provide support, and describe experiences of stigma in an online support platform. A phronetic-iterative and constant comparative approach guided an in-depth analysis of 37 posts on a discussion board designed for individuals with depression. The findings demonstrated that individuals use online discussion forums to request support both implicitly and explicitly. In response to sought support, individuals provided informational, emotional, and network support. Finally, discussion board participants discussed social and self stigma. Despite the limitations of the study, the findings indicate the utility of online social support platforms for individuals suffering from depression and emphasize their importance in facilitating supportive communicative interactions. Keywords: depression, online discussion boards, social support, stigma

Spontaneous Behavioral Coordination: the Impact of Achieved and Desired Interpersonal Closeness on Synchrony and Mimicry

The purpose of the present dissertation was to examine the impact of interpersonal closeness and the desire for interpersonal closeness on displays of behavioral synchrony and mimicry, simultaneously. Groups of two strangers (N = 182 participants, N = 91 dyads) were randomly assigned to complete a “closeness-inducing” task where partners took turns asking and answering intimate questions or a comparison “small-talk” task where partners asked and answered less-intimate questions. Additionally, dyads were randomly assigned to complete these tasks in real time over Zoom, or by reading and responding to the task’s questions over text. These tasks were intended to generate varying levels of interpersonal closeness among participants or to prevent participants from feeling close and instead inspire the desire for closeness. Then, all participants, regardless of prior experimental condition assignment, completed a second problem-solving task where their behavioral synchrony and mimicry were measured using multiple methodological approaches. Specifically, synchrony was measured using global impression ratings whereas mimicry for gestures and postural displays was measured using global impression ratings and molecular coding approaches to allow for discriminant and convergent validity analyses. The effects of the experimental conditions on participants’ reported feelings of closeness and the desire for closeness after their first interaction were examined along with the effect of these experimental conditions on participants’ displays of behavioral synchrony and mimicry in a subsequent interaction. Then, collapsing across experimental condition, the effect of participants’ feeling of closeness with their partner after their first interaction on their behavioral synchrony during their second interaction was tested alongside the effect of participants’ desire for closeness with their partner after their first interaction on their behavioral mimicry. Results generally supported that the more participants reported feeling close with one another, the more they synchronized their behavior during a subsequent interaction. Additionally, the less close participants felt to their partner, but the more they desired to feel close, the more participants mimicked their partner in a subsequent interaction. These results are discussed in relation to understanding the differing nomological networks of behavioral synchrony and mimicry and recommendations for future measurement approaches are made

Let’s get personal: Assessing the impact of personal information in human-agent conversations

Mattar N, Wachsmuth I. Let’s get personal: Assessing the impact of personal information in human-agent conversations. In: Kurosu M, ed. Human-Computer Interaction. Advanced Interaction Modalities and Techniques. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol 8511. Berlin [u.a.]: Springer; 2014: 450-461.Agents that are able to build relationships with the people they are interacting with are envisioned to be more successful in long-term interactions. Small talk about impersonal topics has been found an adequate tool in human-agent interactions for manipulation of such relationships. We suspect that an agent and the interaction with it will be evaluated even more positively when the agent talks about personal information it remembers about its interlocutor from previous encounters. In this paper a model of person memory that provides virtual agents with information needed in social conversations is presented. An interaction study demonstrates the impact of personal information in human-agent conversations and validates the performance of our model