Students’ Views on Intelligent Agents as Assistive Tools for Dealing with Stress and Anxiety in Social Situations

Abstract

Mental health problems are on the rise among university students. Many students face overwhelming stress and anxiety when participating in different activities and interacting with peers, which can affect their performance and mental well-being. However, many are unlikely to seek or receive help. Intelligent agents can offer the possibility of delivering health and mental well-being interventions with the aim of extending and complementing mental health interventions and increasing accessibility. To provide efficient interventions for students, it is imperative to identify design elements and functionalities that are most effective for engaging students. In this paper, we conducted an online survey with 85 participants (undergraduate and graduate students) to investigate preferences for using intelligent agents (e.g., conversational agents, social robots, etc.) to support their mental well-being, specifically to deal with feelings of stress and anxiety in social situations that are common in academic contexts. We asked students to complete a questionnaire in order to explore students’ experience of anxiety and their perceptions of different aspects of intelligent agents in the context of managing anxiety. The results provide insights on different social and technical capabilities as well as design elements that need to be considered when developing intelligent agents to help address stress and anxiety among university students.