title: Perceived organizational affiliation and its effects on patient trust: Role modeling with embodied conversational agents.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Verbal and non-verbal behaviors, which are known as "relational contextualization cues", relay information about relationships and how they are structured. We developed a computer-simulated provider conducting an informed consent process for clinical research to investigate the effects of a provider's alignment of interests with a patient, the research team, or a neutral party on patient trust in the provider.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants (N=43) interacted with a simulated provider for a research informed consent process in a three-arm, counterbalanced, within-subjects experiment. Participants reported their trust in the simulated provider after each treatment.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Participants successfully recognized the alignment manipulation, and perceived the patient-aligned provider as more trustworthy than the other providers. Participants were also more satisfied with the patient-aligned provider, liked this provider more, expressed more desire to continue working with this provider, and stated that they were significantly more likely to sign the consent form after interacting with this provider compared to the other two.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Relational contextualization that aligns with the patient increases trust, satisfaction, and willingness to enroll in the context of research informed consent.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Health providers should align themselves with patients' interests.
authors.affiliation: College of Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA. Electronic address: zessiez@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Zhe
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: College of Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Timothy W
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Bickmore
authors.affiliation: Section of General Internal Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA; Boston Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Michael K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Paasche-Orlow
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003142:Communication; D003198:Computer Simulation; D005260:Female; D006282:Health Personnel; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009935:Organizational Affiliation; D010465:Perception; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D035502:Trust / Q000523:psychology
keywords: Communication; Embodied conversational agents; Relational contextualization; Trust