Emotionality in Task-Oriented Chatbots – The Effect of Emotion Expression on Chatbot Perception

Since interactive communication is generally better received than static one, chatbots are widely used in virtually all domains – ranging from business to education and healthcare. Nevertheless, there are still numerous questions concerning user experience that have not been adequately answered. Therefore, we study the effect of emotion expression on chatbot perception. In an experiment we manipulated a task-oriented chatbot by using short positively valenced emotional expressions and emotional pictorial representations (emojis) and investigated the effect of emotionality on trust, satisfaction, enjoyment, and authenticity as perceived by the user. The emotional chatbot was found to be perceived as more trustworthy than the neutral one. Moreover, users were more satisfied and had longer interactions with this chatbot. These results indicate that even slight variations in emotionality lead to significant difference in chatbot perception.