The Smiling Chatbot: Investigating Emotional Contagion in Human-to-Chatbot Service Interactions

Significant advances in the field of artificial intelligence have given a strong tailwind to the spread of technologies based on it. AI technologies are increasingly influencing private contexts but also the service sector where more and more service encounters are handled by chatbots. In part, however, the spread of chatbots and the associated focus on their functional advantages seem to contradict extant research findings that service interactions are also driven by emotional components. ...