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When you're alone and life is making you lonely you can always go... vent to a chatbot?
In an interview with PsyPost about her new study, Singaporean psychology researcher Meilan Hu said that advancements in chatbot technology got her wondering whether using them as a venting tool could help people feel better.
"AI chatbots have become more advanced such that they are capable of providing human-like responses," Hu, a psychology doctoral candidate at Singapore Management University, told the outlet. "This made me wonder if they could serve as an alternative option for individuals to help process their emotions."
Published in the journal Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, Hu's paper looks into using chatbots less as a therapist and more as a sort of sounding board to which people could vent their frustrations and anxieties.
"I have always found that talking about your frustrations with someone who listens and validates your feelings to be very comforting," she explained. "However, with the increasing prevalence of loneliness across age groups, many individuals may lack access to a trusted, non-judgemental person to talk to."
To test out this hypothesis, Hu and her colleagues recruited 150 Singaporean university students, sorting them randomly into groups to either vent in a back-and-forth text exchange with an AI chatbot designed to be "empathetic" or write about their problems in a journal. After a one-week rest period, the students' roles were then reversed, with the chatbot group journaling for the second phase and vice versa.
After each session, the participants were asked to fill out a survey about their feelings, and in particular were asked to rate feelings of loneliness, stress, and perceived social support.
As the researchers suspected, students reported reduced medium and high-arousal negative emotions — think fear and anger — after their AI chatbot sessions compared to the traditional journaling. According to Hu and her team, this effect may stem from the personalized, real-time responses the chatbot was able to provide them.
Interestingly, the psychology researchers found little difference between venting to chatbots and journaling when it comes to low-arousal negative emotions like sadness — and the chatbots didn't seem to help people feel less lonely or more socially supported, either.
"While they may not be able to replace the depth of connection you receive from human interactions, our findings still show that venting to AI chatbots may effectively alleviate feelings like anger or fear," Hu said. "This makes AI chatbots a valuable tool for providing temporary emotional relief, especially in moments when you just need someone (or something) to talk to."
There's no indication that empathy-trained chatbots can "cure" you of any negative emotions — but hey, it probably won't hurt to try yelling at something that isn't human, either.
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