Fostering User Engagement in the Critical Reflection of Arguments
This addresses the issue of echo chambers and confirmation bias in online information consumption for general users, but it is incremental as it builds on existing persuasive systems with a focus on reflection.
The researchers tackled the problem of biased opinion formation by developing a chatbot that engages users in deliberative dialogue to promote critical reflection, and their user study with 58 participants showed a significant effect on improving user reflection and focus.
A natural way to resolve different points of view and form opinions is through exchanging arguments and knowledge. Facing the vast amount of available information on the internet, people tend to focus on information consistent with their beliefs. Especially when the issue is controversial, information is often selected that does not challenge one's beliefs. To support a fair and unbiased opinion-building process, we propose a chatbot system that engages in a deliberative dialogue with a human. In contrast to persuasive systems, the envisioned chatbot aims to provide a diverse and representative overview - embedded in a conversation with the user. To account for a reflective and unbiased exploration of the topic, we enable the system to intervene if the user is too focused on their pre-existing opinion. Therefore we propose a model to estimate the users' reflective engagement (RUE), defined as their critical thinking and open-mindedness. We report on a user study with 58 participants to test our model and the effect of the intervention mechanism, discuss the implications of the results, and present perspectives for future work. The results show a significant effect on both user reflection and total user focus, proving our proposed approach's validity.