Transhumanism in Psychology: The Attitude towards the Use of Chatbots in Psychotherapy and Ethical Implications

Abstract

Transhumanism touches all areas of life, psychology included. In this research, we examined public attitudes towards the use of chatbots in the psychotherapeutic process. This study was conducted on 135 people (convenience sampling) from Romania, aged 18–65 years (M = 23.58; SD = 7.04) between November 1 and 14, 2022. Our results highlighted a variety of important issues regarding the attitudes of the studied population towards initiating a therapeutic approach with a chatbot rather instead of a human psychotherapist. Ethical implications were also discussed, and our findings and results support the literature with practical utility and provide insight into future research.