Correct Yourself, Keep My Trust: How Self-Correction and Social Connection Shape Credibility in Social Chatbots

Self-correction preserves chatbot credibility better than external correction, study finds

A between-subjects experiment (N=120) compared three error-correction strategies for social chatbots: webpage retraction, self-correction, and correction by an expert chatbot. All three strategies corrected errors equally well, but only self-correction left the chatbot's trustworthiness and perceived expertise intact. Social connection with the chatbot (measured via social attraction and self-disclosure) amplified belief change, but only when the chatbot corrected itself — outsourcing corrections severed this effect entirely. The findings have direct implications for how conversational AI systems should handle hallucinations and factual errors in deployed products.