Culturally tailored chatbot design: position chatbots as reflective companions for Chinese users and as thinking partners for Western users, while deploying cognitive support broadly¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The authors recommend designing AI chatbot applications differently across cultural contexts based on the observed divergence. For Chinese users, chatbots "can be positioned as non-judgmental and empathic companions that facilitate self-reflection and adaptive coping", with features like journaling prompts; for Western users, designers should frame chatbots as "thinking partners" rather than empathic listeners. Because instrumental help-seeking showed stable positive associations, they suggest cognitive support applications "can be deployed broadly without extensive cultural adaptation".

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Designers need to know the cultural background of the target user population

Constraints¶

• The recommendations rest on cross-sectional preference data, not on tested design interventions

Target Learners¶

• adolescents in the US and Hong Kong
• Chinese and Western chatbot users

Target Learning Goals¶

• adaptive coping
• self-reflection
• help-seeking for schoolwork and information

Affordances¶

• Casa Paradigm Cultural Anthropomorphism Extension

Related Strategies¶

• Position AI chatbots for relatedness as companions that normalize help-seeking and connect students to human communities, not substitutes for them
• Use background-characteristic evidence to decide when and for whom to deploy game-based learning and whether to tailor instruction

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Huinan Hu, Mojtaba Habibi Asgarabad, Enyi Jen, H. N. Cheung. (2026). Turn to chatbots for sharing feelings or seeking solutions? Differential associations of preferences for chatbot-mediated self-disclosure and instrumental help-seeking with adolescent interpersonal behaviors in the United States and Hong Kong. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/qm6bg_v1