You'll be Great: Virtual Agent-based Cognitive Restructuring to Reduce Public Speaking Anxiety

Public speaking is an essential task for success in many careers, yet fear of public speaking makes this an undesirable activity for most people and negatively affects the quality of many presentations. Cognitive behavioral therapy is an effective tool for helping people overcome social anxieties disorders, including public speaking anxiety. However, most people do not engage in this therapy for public speaking anxiety, due to time constraints and other barriers. We present a virtual coach that uses cognitive behavioral therapy techniques to help presenters restructure irrational thoughts associated with public speaking anxiety. The design of the virtual coach was informed by an analysis of a corpus of cognitive restructuring examples generated by a clinical psychologist. In a between-subjects experiment comparing the virtual coach to a control condition, the virtual coach was shown to be significantly better at reducing thoughts associated with speech anxiety and improving a presentation experience for speakers.