How might a virtual person be better (or worse) to get people to open up about ACEs?

When we feel down and find ourselves at the doctor's office for help, the best person to get us to open up about our problems isn't a person at all. It's a computer.

A new USC study suggests that patients are more willing to disclose personal informationto virtual humans than actual ones, in large part because computers lack the proclivity to look down on people the way another human might.

The research, which was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the U.S. Army, is promising for people suffering from post-traumatic stress and other mental anguish, said Gale Lucas, a social psychologist at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies, who led the study. In intake interviews, people were more honest about their symptoms, no matter how potentially embarrassing, when they believed that a human observer wasn't in on the conversation.

"In any given topic, there's a difference between what a person is willing to admit in person versus anonymously," Lucas said.

The study, which will be published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, provides the first empirical evidence that virtual humans can increase a patient's willingness to disclose personal information in a clinical setting, researchers said. It also presents compelling reasons for doctors to start using virtual humans as medical screeners. The honest answers acquired by a virtual human could help doctors diagnose and treat their patients more appropriately.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-07-virtual-humans-patients.html