Polite But Boring? Trade-offs Between Engagement and Psychological Reactance to Chatbot Feedback Styles

TL;DR

This study investigates how different chatbot feedback styles influence psychological reactance and message effectiveness in behaviour-change contexts. Using a 3-by-2 online mixed design, it compares Direct, Politeness, and Verbal Leakage across Personally-Affecting and Societally-Affecting scenarios, measuring emotional reactance, perceived threat to freedom, and processing and persuasiveness of messages. Key findings show that Politeness reduces negative reactance and threat but can feel unsurprising and boring, while Verbal Leakage increases surprise and engagement yet elevates reactance and perceived control; Direct remains the most reactance-provoking baseline. The results highlight important trade-offs and suggest designers adopt a broader repertoire of feedback styles and onboarding strategies to tailor feedback to user expectations and context, with implications for ethical and effective behavior-change agents.

Abstract

As conversational agents become increasingly common in behaviour change interventions, understanding optimal feedback delivery mechanisms becomes increasingly important. However, choosing a style that both lessens psychological reactance (perceived threats to freedom) while simultaneously eliciting feelings of surprise and engagement represents a complex design problem. We explored how three different feedback styles: 'Direct', 'Politeness', and 'Verbal Leakage' (slips or disfluencies to reveal a desired behaviour) affect user perceptions and behavioural intentions. Matching expectations from literature, the 'Direct' chatbot led to lower behavioural intentions and higher reactance, while the 'Politeness' chatbot evoked higher behavioural intentions and lower reactance. However, 'Politeness' was also seen as unsurprising and unengaging by participants. In contrast, 'Verbal Leakage' evoked reactance, yet also elicited higher feelings of surprise, engagement, and humour. These findings highlight that effective feedback requires navigating trade-offs between user reactance and engagement, with novel approaches such as 'Verbal Leakage' offering promising alternative design opportunities.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Overview of the experiment flow. Participants were assigned to one of three feedback styles, and completed chatbot interactions for both Personally- and Societally-Affecting scenarios (order randomised). After each interaction and at the end of the study, participants provided evaluations including survey responses and open-ended feedback.
• Figure 2: The chatbot interface as seen by participants. The screenshot shows the Verbal Leakage feedback style in the Societally-Affecting scenario.
• Figure 3: Two of the Psychological Distance scenario instructions (Personally-Affecting and Societally-Affecting) as shown to participants.
• Figure 4: Emotional reactance (anger, guilt, and surprise) outcomes by Feedback Style and Psychological Distance. Significance is indicated as follows: $p<0.05$ ($\ast$), $p<0.01$ ($\ast\ast$), and $p<0.0001$ ($\ast\ast\ast$). Error bars represent $\pm 1$ SE from the mean. See Section \ref{['sec:emotional-outcomes']} for interaction effects.
• Figure 5: Threat to Freedom and Message Effectiveness (message processing and persuasiveness) outcomes by Feedback Style and Psychological Distance. Significance is indicated as follows: $p<0.05$ ($\ast$), $p<0.01$ ($\ast\ast$), and $p<0.0001$ ($\ast\ast\ast$). Error bars represent $\pm 1$ SE from the mean. See Sections \ref{['sec:threat-outcomes']} and \ref{['sec:effectiveness-outcomes']} for interaction effects.