# The Impact of an Agent's Voice in Psychological Counseling: Session Evaluation and Counselor Rating
## 6 Discussion  
This study analyzed the perception of users toward the agent and the counseling effects according to the voice of the agent. Accordingly, a psychological counseling agent was designed that performed a psychological counseling conversation with subjects in four voices according to age and gender. Based on the analytic result, it was verified that the characteristics of the psychological counseling agent and the counseling effects perceived by users varied depending on the voice of the agent. Among characteristics of the psychological counseling agent perceived by users, the characteristics related to the dimensions of attractiveness and expertness showed a significant difference according to \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & **Depth** & **Smoothness** & **Attractiveness** & **Expertness** & **Trustworthiness** \\ \hline Depth & - & - & - & - & - \\ Smoothness & 0.501 ** & - & - & - & - \\ Attractiveness & 0.341 ** & 0.632 ** & - & - & - \\ Expertness & 0.711 ** & 0.394 ** & 0.303 ** & - & - \\ Trustworthiness & 0.448 ** & 0.464 ** & 0.578 ** & 0.458 ** & - \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Correlation among the dependent variables. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline  & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Younger**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Older**} \\ \cline{2-5}
**Variable** & **Male** & **Female** & **Male** & **Female** \\ \cline{2-5}  & **M (SD)** & **M (SD)** & **M (SD)** & **M (SD)** \\ \hline Depth & 3.51 a (0.91) & 3.79 a (1.09) & 4.63 b (0.83) & 4.80 b (0.88) \\ Smoothness & 5.16 (1.07) & 5.36 (0.91) & 5.12 (0.92) & 5.75 (0.65) \\ Attractiveness & 19.31 a (4.04) & 22.27 b (3.34) & 19.36 a (3.44) & 23.18 b (3.17) \\ Expertness & 16.04 a (4.03) & 17.00 a (4.73) & 20.59 b (3.39) & 21.18 b (3.83) \\ Trustworthiness & 20.09 (3.68) & 20.04 (4.32) & 19.91 (2.56) & 22.00 (2.54) \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular} Note. Means in a row with differing subscripts (\({}_{\alpha b}\)) are significantly different at \(p\) < 0.05.  
\end{table} 
Table 3: Means and standard deviations for the four voice on the dependent variables. the voice of the agent. As for the dimension of attractiveness represented by adjectives, such as warm, friendly, and likable, the female-voiced agent was found to have a higher level of attractiveness than the male-voiced agent. Moreover, a difference according to voice gender, regardless of voice age, was observed. This result supports existing voice-based CA research results on a difference in voice effects according to voice gender. In a study conducted by [PERSON] and [PERSON] [65], people perceived that female-voiced computers were more sensitive than male-voiced computers. [PERSON] [66] researched on responses of people according to voice gender and found that both male and female subjects found the female voice warmer than the male voice. In addition, according to traditional psychological counseling studies, it has been proved that clients tend to perceive the female counselors more emotionally than the male counselors, which allows female counselors to conduct emotional counseling more effectively compared to the male [59, 66]. Furthermore, due to psycho-logical counseling research, it has been found that the higher the emotional communion between the counselor and the client results in an increase of information retrieved of the client [55]. Obtaining detailed and sensitive information from patients is very important for the health care of such patients [67, 68]. Thus, in the field of eHealth, including psychological counseling, using a female voice rather than a male voice would be more effective, given that such CAs can help build empathy with people and promote information disclosure [69, 70]. In this study, subjects perceived that the agent using an older voice had a higher level of expertness than the agent using a younger voice. As for environmental conditions, voices were established as independent variables, and the designed agent was operated consistently in the entire experimental process.