Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Chatbots have emerged as a powerful tool for collaborative teamwork. In this paper, we investigate the influence of chatbots on virtual teamwork within the context of a collaborative online activity. To assess chatbots' impact on group dynamics and performance, we designed a novel collaborative activity with an associated online platform and a custom chatbot assistant. We recruited 72 participants divided into four-person teams, with the teams split into four conditions depending on the chatbot's assistance strategy (none, by private chat, by group chat, or both). We found that chatbot assistance improved participants' performance and reduced response times to information requests during the collaborative activity. This improvement was more pronounced for teams in the group and both chats conditions, while participants in the private chat condition reported significantly higher perceived effort. Furthermore, we observed a significant correlation between the perceived quality of the chatbot's communication skills and the cognitive workload and time pressure experienced by the participants. Our findings contribute to the field of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work by proposing a new design of experimental activity to study virtual collaboration, providing insights that can inform the design of future collaboration tools and adding to our broader understanding of human-AI synergy in group settings.
DOI: 10.1145/3710945
Authors: Clélie Amiot, François Charoy, Jérôme Dinet
Institutions: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies du numérique, Laboratoire Lorrain de Recherche en Informatique et ses Applications, Université de Lorraine, Laboratoire Lorrain de Psychologie et Neurosciences de la dynamique des comportements
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funder: Agence Nationale de la Recherche
Award: Collaboration à long terme
OpenAlex ID: W4406602998