Users receive answers to 51 common questions about the COVID-19 vaccination; direct contact is very promising.
Just a few minutes of interaction with a chatbot can shake COVID-19 vaccine skepticism, as a study by CNRS , INSERM and ENS-PSL shows.
Previous analyzes have shown that mass communication – short messages via TV or radio – is not very effective in persuading those unwilling to vaccinate. In contrast, discussing concerns with a trusted professional may be more persuasive. However, personal discussions with every vaccine skeptic are not feasible in practice.
Positivity increases
To solve this problem, a team of cognitive scientists from the Institut Jean-Nicod (CNRS/ENS-PSL) and the Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Computationnelles (INSERM/ENS-PSL) created a chatbot that provides users with answers to 51 common questions for COVID-19 vaccination.
Chatbots have the advantage of quick, personalized question and answer sessions and reach a large number of people.
The researchers tested their chatbot with 338 people and compared their reactions with those of the control group who read only a short paragraph containing information about COVID-19 vaccines.
After a few minutes of interaction with the chatbot, the number of participants with positive attitudes increased by 37 percent . People were also more open to vaccination after exposure. Information about refusal to be vaccinated also fell by 20 percent . Such changes in posture were negligible in the control group.
Skeptics convince others
It remains unclear whether the effect of the interaction with the chatbot is lasting and whether it is the same across different age groups and also effective among those people who are most against vaccination. However, the results published in the “Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied” show that a chatbot can indirectly reach a very large audience.
Half of the experimental group later tried to convince other people to get vaccinated. Three quarters related to information provided by the chatbot.
This suggests that a regularly updated chatbot could be an effective tool for reducing vaccine hesitancy. However, the study participants were younger and better educated than the general population.
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Source: press release
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