Attitudes toward artificial intelligence and its application in psychotherapy: Assessment in healthy adults and validation of an assessment measure

TL;DR

This study explores how adults view AI in psychotherapy, finding generally neutral attitudes and identifying factors like gender and personality that influence acceptance.

Contribution

The study introduces and validates a measure for assessing attitudes toward AI in psychotherapy and identifies influencing factors.

Findings

Men, academics, and those without psychological symptoms showed lower AI anxiety.

Conscientiousness and extraversion correlated with lower AI acceptance.

AI diagnostics and app-based interventions were most accepted, while robotics were least accepted.

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) represents a digital turning point that might have an impact on psychological treatment. To effectively integrate AI into psychological practice, it is important to analyze attitudes toward AI and the factors influencing these attitudes.

To achieve this objective, a quantitative online survey to assess acceptance of AI was designed and assessed in 205 adult participants. Additionally, demographic variables, psychological symptoms, psychotherapy experience, and personality traits were assessed as potential factors influencing AI acceptance.

In general, attitudes toward AI and its application in psychotherapy were relatively neutral. The results indicated that men, academics, and people without psychological symptom burdens showed lower anxiety of AI in general. Conscientiousness and extraversion correlated negatively with the acceptance of AI in general. Concerning the application of AI in psychotherapy, the only significant difference was found that men showed a more positive attitude compared to women. The most accepted areas were the application of AI in diagnostics and app-based interventions, the lowest acceptance was found for the application of robotics.

The main finding emphasizes that AI in general and in relation to its application in psychotherapy is considered as neutral and can be used in diagnostic assessments and treatment, although the type of AI might be important. For some subgroups of patients, it might be important to increase their acceptability concerning the application of AI within psychotherapy if this is intended to be embedded in the therapeutic process.

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