Psychology Students‘ Attitudes towards Artificial Intelligence in Mental Health

Abstract

Background and aim. While artificial intelligence (AI) and its application in medicine are developing rapidly (Liu et al., 2018), its integration into mental health care is nascent (Fiske et al., 2017). The aim of this study is to evaluate the attitudes of future psychologists towards AI systems and their application in mental health care. Methods. The study included 34 psychology students (mean=23,1 ± 5; 86% females) with 18 assigned to the Wysa group and 17 to the second group. The first group used Wysa, a mobile app offering emotional support through AI-driven chat conversations. The second group watched a recorded presentation on AI in mental health. Attitudes towards AI were evaluated pre- and post- interventions in both groups using The General Attitudes towards Artificial Intelligence Scale and Oh et al. (2019) questionnaire. During interventions, automated facial expression analysis software “FaceReader” was used to assess participants’ emotions. Results. Significant differences in emotional states emerged between the groups, with the Wysa group showing significantly higher levels of the emotions “angry”, “contempt”, “disgusted”, “happy” and “scared” (Mann-Whitney test p=0.02; 0.03; <0.001; <0.001; 0.09, correspondingly) while the presentation group demonstrated a significantly higher prevalence of the “neutral” state (Mann-Whitney test p<0.00). Moreover, we investigated the differences in the attitudes between the presentation and Wysa groups. Before the intervention, the scores of “Perception of AI technologies in psychology” did not differ significantly (MannWhitney test p=0.252). Post-intervention, participants of the presentation group showed a higher positive attitude compared to the Wysa group (Mann-Whitney test p=0.010). Next, we analyzed the changes in the attitudes within the two groups. After the intervention, participants in the presentation group reported higher scores on the “Perception of AI technologies in psychology”, “Advantages of using AI in psychology” and “Positive attitudes towards AI” (Wilcoxon signed rank test p=0.001; 0.013; 0.017, correspondingly). Participants of the Wysa group did not show significant changes in the attitudes on AI technologies. Conclusion. The presentation intervention elicited significant positive changes in attitudes towards AI in psychology, whereas the Wysa intervention did not yield statistically significant alterations in attitudes among participants.