# Expressive Interviewing: A Conversational System for Coping with COVID-19

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.03819 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.03819/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 7 Jul 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Towards Emotional Support Dialog Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01144/) (2021)
- [Cognitive Reframing of Negative Thoughts through Human-Language Model Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.02466/) (2023)
- [Task-Adaptive Tokenization: Enhancing Long-Form Text Generation Efficacy in Mental Health and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05317/) (2023)
- [How Good Is NLP? A Sober Look at NLP Tasks through the Lens of Social Impact](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02359/) (2021)
- [IMBUE: Improving Interpersonal Effectiveness through Simulation and Just-in-time Feedback with Human-Language Model Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.12556/) (2024)
- [Few-shot Dialogue Strategy Learning for Motivational Interviewing via Inductive Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15737/) (2024)
- [Beyond Discrete Personas: Personality Modeling Through Journal Intensive Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11250/) (2024)
- [Benchmark Data and Evaluation Framework for Intent Discovery Around COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11966/) (2022)
- [Towards Answering Open-ended Ethical Quandary Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.05989/) (2022)
- [ISCA: A Framework for Interview-Style Conversational Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14344/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns for many regarding personal and public health implications, financial security and economic stability. Alongside many other unprecedented challenges, there are increasing concerns over social isolation and mental health. We introduce textitExpressive Interviewing--an interview-style conversational system that draws on ideas from motivational interviewing and expressive writing. Expressive Interviewing seeks to encourage users to express their thoughts and feelings through writing by asking them questions about how COVID-19 has impacted their lives. We present relevant aspects of the system's design and implementation as well as quantitative and qualitative analyses of user interactions with the system. In addition, we conduct a comparative evaluation with a general purpose dialogue system for mental health that shows our system potential in helping users to cope with COVID-19 issues.