AI mediators reduce negative emotions and help resolve disputes
AI Mediators Regulate Emotion and Create Value in Disputes
Human-Computer Interaction
Summary
Disagreements often involve strong negative feelings that make finding solutions hard. The authors tested if AI could help calm emotions better than human helpers in disputes. They found that AI mediators were more effective at reducing bad feelings between people arguing. The AI also helped people find deals that made both sides happier, especially when there was room to create shared benefits. The AI sent more messages about making trade-offs, which likely contributed to better outcomes.
What this means in practice
- •For legal mediators: Support dispute resolution by integrating AI tools that better reduce negative emotions and facilitate agreements.
- •For customer support teams: Use AI mediators to manage emotional conflicts in customer disputes, helping to reach mutually beneficial solutions.
Authors
James Hale, Jonathan Gratch
Abstract
In conflict and disputes, especially, emotion acts as a salient force in influencing outcomes. Prior work shows negative affect can obstruct collaborative behaviors, which typically lead to ``win-win'' outcomes. Thus, some suggest mediators may help regulate emotion and achieve joint gains. With the proliferation of AI, we posit LLMs may perform well at this task, with the added benefit of better accessibility compared with a human mediator. To examine the effectiveness of AI versus novice human mediators, we conduct a between-subjects experiment, where participants engage in a dispute mediated by a human, AI, or no mediator. We first analyze how well the mediators regulate emotions within a dispute -- finding AI mediators perform significantly better than humans at reducing negative emotion. We next examine whether AI mediators facilitate disputants better realizing joint gains in disputes with high integrative potential (IP) -- we find a marginally significant interaction between IP and condition (AI versus human), indicating LLMs may outperform humans at aiding disputants realize joint gains. Lastly, we perform an analysis of the messages the mediators sent, finding the AI sent significantly more messages suggesting trade-offs compared to the humans.