Investigating Affective Use and Emotional Well-being on ChatGPT

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Phang, Jason, Lampe, Michael, Ahmad, Lama, Agarwal, Sandhini, Fang, Cathy Mengying, Liu, Auren R., Danry, Valdemar, Lee, Eunhae, Chan, Samantha W. T., Pataranutaporn, Pat, Maes, Pattie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Phang, Jason
Lampe, Michael
Ahmad, Lama
Agarwal, Sandhini
Fang, Cathy Mengying
Liu, Auren R.
Danry, Valdemar
Lee, Eunhae
Chan, Samantha W. T.
Pataranutaporn, Pat
Maes, Pattie
author_facet Phang, Jason
Lampe, Michael
Ahmad, Lama
Agarwal, Sandhini
Fang, Cathy Mengying
Liu, Auren R.
Danry, Valdemar
Lee, Eunhae
Chan, Samantha W. T.
Pataranutaporn, Pat
Maes, Pattie
contents As AI chatbots see increased adoption and integration into everyday life, questions have been raised about the potential impact of human-like or anthropomorphic AI on users. In this work, we investigate the extent to which interactions with ChatGPT (with a focus on Advanced Voice Mode) may impact users' emotional well-being, behaviors and experiences through two parallel studies. To study the affective use of AI chatbots, we perform large-scale automated analysis of ChatGPT platform usage in a privacy-preserving manner, analyzing over 3 million conversations for affective cues and surveying over 4,000 users on their perceptions of ChatGPT. To investigate whether there is a relationship between model usage and emotional well-being, we conduct an Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved randomized controlled trial (RCT) on close to 1,000 participants over 28 days, examining changes in their emotional well-being as they interact with ChatGPT under different experimental settings. In both on-platform data analysis and the RCT, we observe that very high usage correlates with increased self-reported indicators of dependence. From our RCT, we find that the impact of voice-based interactions on emotional well-being to be highly nuanced, and influenced by factors such as the user's initial emotional state and total usage duration. Overall, our analysis reveals that a small number of users are responsible for a disproportionate share of the most affective cues.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_03888
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Investigating Affective Use and Emotional Well-being on ChatGPT
Phang, Jason
Lampe, Michael
Ahmad, Lama
Agarwal, Sandhini
Fang, Cathy Mengying
Liu, Auren R.
Danry, Valdemar
Lee, Eunhae
Chan, Samantha W. T.
Pataranutaporn, Pat
Maes, Pattie
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
As AI chatbots see increased adoption and integration into everyday life, questions have been raised about the potential impact of human-like or anthropomorphic AI on users. In this work, we investigate the extent to which interactions with ChatGPT (with a focus on Advanced Voice Mode) may impact users' emotional well-being, behaviors and experiences through two parallel studies. To study the affective use of AI chatbots, we perform large-scale automated analysis of ChatGPT platform usage in a privacy-preserving manner, analyzing over 3 million conversations for affective cues and surveying over 4,000 users on their perceptions of ChatGPT. To investigate whether there is a relationship between model usage and emotional well-being, we conduct an Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved randomized controlled trial (RCT) on close to 1,000 participants over 28 days, examining changes in their emotional well-being as they interact with ChatGPT under different experimental settings. In both on-platform data analysis and the RCT, we observe that very high usage correlates with increased self-reported indicators of dependence. From our RCT, we find that the impact of voice-based interactions on emotional well-being to be highly nuanced, and influenced by factors such as the user's initial emotional state and total usage duration. Overall, our analysis reveals that a small number of users are responsible for a disproportionate share of the most affective cues.
title Investigating Affective Use and Emotional Well-being on ChatGPT
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.03888