Table_1_Electronic Brainstorming With a Chatbot Partner: A Good Idea Due to Increased Productivity and Idea Diversity.DOCX

Brainstorming is a creative technique that fosters collaboration to enhance idea generation. The occurrence of evaluation apprehension, a fear of being evaluated negatively by others, however, can stymy brainstorming. How the advantages of collaboration can be leveraged while evaluation apprehension is prevented is an open scientific and practical problem. In this brief research report, it is proposed that chatbots could provide a solution. Chatbots can be designed to share ideas with their users, facilitating inspiration. Compared to human beings, chatbots are also perceived as possessing limited agency and evaluative capacity. This could reduce evaluation apprehension. Given that chatbots are often embedded in a textual chat interface, social cues (picture, name, and description) can reinforce the perceived chatbot identity, enhancing its alleged effects on evaluation apprehension and subsequently on brainstorming performance. These conjectures were tested in an online 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment (n = 120) where people were instructed to brainstorm with a partner that was framed as either a chatbot or human being (but followed the same automated script), with or without the presence of social cues. The results showed that brainstorming with a chatbot led participants to produce more ideas, with more diversity than brainstorming with an alleged human being. Social cues enhanced the effect on idea diversity, but only with the chatbot. No significant effects on evaluation apprehension were found. The contribution of this study is therefore that chatbots can be used for effective human–machine teaming during brainstorming, but this enhancement is not explained by its effects on evaluation apprehension.

头脑风暴（Brainstorming）是一种旨在促进协作、提升创意产出的创造性技法。然而，评价畏惧（evaluation apprehension）——即担忧被他人作出负面评价的心理——的出现，会阻碍头脑风暴的开展。如何在规避评价畏惧的同时，充分发挥协作的优势，是一个兼具科学价值与实践意义的开放性问题。在本篇简短的研究报告中，我们提出聊天机器人（chatbots）或可提供解决方案。聊天机器人可被设计为与用户分享创意，从而激发创作灵感。与人类搭档相比，人们通常认为聊天机器人的能动性与评价能力较为有限，这或可降低个体的评价畏惧感。鉴于聊天机器人通常嵌入文本聊天界面，社交线索（social cues，包括图片、名称与描述）可强化用户对聊天机器人身份的感知，进而增强其对评价畏惧乃至头脑风暴表现的预期影响。我们通过一项在线2×2被试间实验（between-subjects experiment，n=120）对上述假设进行了检验：实验要求被试与一名被设定为聊天机器人或人类的搭档开展头脑风暴（二者均遵循相同的自动化脚本），并设置是否带有社交线索两种实验条件。结果显示，与搭档为预设人类的情况相比，与聊天机器人协作开展头脑风暴时，被试产出的创意数量更多、多样性更高。社交线索可提升创意多样性的提升效果，但该效应仅在聊天机器人组中显著。本研究未发现评价畏惧层面的显著效应。因此，本研究的贡献在于：聊天机器人可用于头脑风暴场景下高效的人机协同（human–machine teaming），但其增效机制并非通过影响评价畏惧得以实现。