{"id":72,"date":"2025-09-24T09:20:49","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T13:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/ayabakan\/?p=72"},"modified":"2026-03-30T11:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:42:08","slug":"judgmental-bot-conversational-ai-in-online-mental-health-screening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/ayabakan\/2025\/09\/24\/judgmental-bot-conversational-ai-in-online-mental-health-screening\/","title":{"rendered":"Judgmental Bot: Conversational AI in Online Mental Health Screening"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Judgmental Bot: Conversational AI in Online Mental Health Screening<\/h2>\n<h3 class=\"al-author-name\"><a class=\"linked-name js-linked-name stats-author-info-trigger\" rel=\"nofollow\">Ryan Raimi,\u00a0<\/a><a class=\"linked-name js-linked-name stats-author-info-trigger\" rel=\"nofollow\">Antino Kim,\u00a0<\/a><a class=\"linked-name js-linked-name stats-author-info-trigger\" rel=\"nofollow\">Sezgin Ayabakan,\u00a0<\/a><a class=\"linked-name js-linked-name stats-author-info-trigger\" rel=\"nofollow\">Alan R. Dennis<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Abstract:<\/p>\n<p>Only a fraction of people struggling with mental health issues seek medical care, partly due to the fear of being judged, so deploying text-based conversational agents (i.e., chatbots) as a mental health screening tool is often viewed as a way to lower a barrier to mental healthcare. We conducted four experiments and a qualitative study and consistently found that participants perceived a text-based chatbot to be more judgmental than a human mental healthcare professional, although the interactions were identical. This greater judgmentalness reduced the willingness to use the service, disclose information, and follow the agent\u2019s recommendations. Judgmentalness was seen as a rush to judgment without a proper grasp of the issues. The chatbot was perceived as more judgmental because it was less capable of deeply understanding the issues (e.g., emotionally and socially) and conveying a sense of being heard and validated. We have long assumed that chatbots can address the real or imagined fear of being judged by others for stigmatized conditions like mental health. Our study shows that perceptions of judgmentalness are the opposite of what we have assumed and that these perceptions significantly influence patients\u2019 acceptance of chatbots for mental health screening.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/misq.umn.edu\/misq\/article-abstract\/doi\/10.25300\/MISQ\/2025\/18555\/3253\/Judgmental-Bot-Conversational-Agents-in-Online\">MIS Quarterly, 49(4) 1319-1356, December 2025<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Judgmental Bot: Conversational AI in Online Mental Health Screening Ryan Raimi,\u00a0Antino Kim,\u00a0Sezgin Ayabakan,\u00a0Alan R. Dennis Abstract: Only a fraction of people struggling with mental health issues seek medical care, partly due to the fear of being judged, so deploying text-based conversational agents (i.e., chatbots) as a mental health screening tool is often viewed as a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17227,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[732460,198],"tags":[783260,790383,790377,790380,790381,790378,790379,790382],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-research","tag-chatbot","tag-construct-building","tag-conversational-agent","tag-experiment","tag-interview","tag-judgmentalness","tag-mental-health","tag-mixed-methods"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Sezgin Ayabakan","author_link":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/ayabakan\/author\/sezgin-ayabakan\/"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/ayabakan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/ayabakan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/ayabakan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/ayabakan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17227"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/ayabakan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/ayabakan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84,"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/ayabakan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions\/84"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/ayabakan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/ayabakan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/ayabakan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}