Emotional Reactions and Likelihood of Response to Questions Designed for a Mental Health Chatbot Among Adolescents: Experimental Study

Editorial reading guide · Kindness

Which ways of asking about feelings help my teenager feel comfortable rather than interrogated?

Makes the experience of being asked about feelings concrete. Multiple-choice questions generally elicited more positive reactions and greater stated willingness to answer than open-ended questions; GIFs affected emotional valence but not willingness, and friendly versus professional tone was not significant. A welcoming interface is therefore a design question, not evidence of empathy or treatment.

Study context

19 community adolescents in Montreal; each rated 96 possible chatbot questions shown briefly on a screen.

Age / stage: 14–17 years

Read with three questions

1. Why did multiple-choice questions outperform open-ended questions on stated willingness to respond in this task?
2. How did GIFs influence emotional valence without increasing willingness to answer?
3. What is lost when adolescents rate imagined chatbot questions instead of using a live support conversation?

Keep the limits in view

Small convenience sample and a repetitive laboratory task susceptible to fatigue. Responses were imagined intentions, not actual disclosures, sustained use or mental-health change. The experiment manipulated only three interface features; it did not establish a clinically empathic conversational system.