U S young adults envision AI aiding emotion coping in relationships

"I Talked an AI Chatbot, So What's Next?" How U.S. Young Adults Imagine Responsible AI for Emotion Coping

Human-Computer Interaction

Summary

Coping with emotions usually happens through interactions with friends, family, or counselors, but AI chatbots tend to focus on just one person chatting with the AI. The authors studied how young adults in the U.S. imagine AI helping with emotional support in ways that connect to real relationships. They found that AI could take on different supportive roles but also saw challenges, like making relationships seem flat or putting too much effort on users. The authors suggest AI should fit into people's specific relationships, help people support each other, and strengthen confidence in managing emotions.

What this means in practice

  • For mental health app developers: Design AI chatbots that provide tailored support reflecting users’ real-life emotional relationships, encouraging interaction beyond just user and AI.$Commercial implications: Enables creation of emotion-support AI apps with relational awareness that can be marketed for more effective mental health assistance.
  • For social platform engineers: Integrate AI tools that offer materials and suggestions to foster emotional support exchanges between users on social networks.

A position paper. It proposes an approach and reports no results.

Authors

Jiaying Liu, Nimra Ishfaq

Abstract

Emotion coping is inherently relational, unfolding through interactions with friends, family, professionals, and communities. Yet AI chatbots are largely designed around a user--AI dyad. Learning from the ethics of care, we examine how AI chatbots shape the relational conditions of emotion coping. We conducted a scenario-based study with 17 U.S. young adults across four emotion coping scenarios. Participants identified eight roles through which AI could support relational conditions, alongside three challenges: flattening distinct relational conditions, discouraging reciprocity, and shifting relational labor onto users. This study contributed a relational perspective of responsible AI in emotion coping. We argue that responsible AI should respond to individuals' situated relational conditions rather than provide general-purpose support. We further identify two design principles: fostering reciprocity by supplying materials to engage with others, and strengthening emotional self-efficacy. Together, we position responsible AI as AI in the loop of human relationships.
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