Can AI Help You Get Over Your Breakup? One Session with a Belief-Reframing Chatbot Shows Sustained Distress Reduction
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866911646666981376 |
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| author | Menzel, Thomas Schimpf, Michel Bohné, Thomas |
| author_facet | Menzel, Thomas Schimpf, Michel Bohné, Thomas |
| contents | Romantic breakups are among the most common and intense sources of psychological distress. We evaluated *overit*, a single-session AI chatbot that uses cognitive reappraisal to address breakup distress, informed by memory reconsolidation theory. In a pre-registered randomized controlled trial, 254 adults in the United States and United Kingdom who had experienced a romantic breakup were assigned to either an initial survey assessment followed by an AI chat session or to a survey-only control. Breakup distress was measured at baseline, 7 days, and again at an exploratory 1-month follow-up using the Breakup Distress Scale. Participants assigned to *overit* showed a significantly greater reduction in breakup distress than controls at 7 days (time-by-condition interaction B = -5.36, SE = 1.19, p < .001; completer-based d = -0.70). A smaller but still significant treatment advantage remained detectable at the exploratory 1-month follow-up among post-session completers (B = -2.92, SE = 1.22, p = .017). Exploratory post hoc moderation suggested a larger effect among male participants (B = 7.78, p = .003). These results suggest that a brief AI chatbot conversation can meaningfully reduce breakup distress, with exploratory evidence that a smaller advantage persists over the following month. Future work should test the intervention against active controls, evaluate repeated-session use, and recruit more diverse samples. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_03261 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Can AI Help You Get Over Your Breakup? One Session with a Belief-Reframing Chatbot Shows Sustained Distress Reduction Menzel, Thomas Schimpf, Michel Bohné, Thomas Human-Computer Interaction Artificial Intelligence Romantic breakups are among the most common and intense sources of psychological distress. We evaluated *overit*, a single-session AI chatbot that uses cognitive reappraisal to address breakup distress, informed by memory reconsolidation theory. In a pre-registered randomized controlled trial, 254 adults in the United States and United Kingdom who had experienced a romantic breakup were assigned to either an initial survey assessment followed by an AI chat session or to a survey-only control. Breakup distress was measured at baseline, 7 days, and again at an exploratory 1-month follow-up using the Breakup Distress Scale. Participants assigned to *overit* showed a significantly greater reduction in breakup distress than controls at 7 days (time-by-condition interaction B = -5.36, SE = 1.19, p < .001; completer-based d = -0.70). A smaller but still significant treatment advantage remained detectable at the exploratory 1-month follow-up among post-session completers (B = -2.92, SE = 1.22, p = .017). Exploratory post hoc moderation suggested a larger effect among male participants (B = 7.78, p = .003). These results suggest that a brief AI chatbot conversation can meaningfully reduce breakup distress, with exploratory evidence that a smaller advantage persists over the following month. Future work should test the intervention against active controls, evaluate repeated-session use, and recruit more diverse samples. |
| title | Can AI Help You Get Over Your Breakup? One Session with a Belief-Reframing Chatbot Shows Sustained Distress Reduction |
| topic | Human-Computer Interaction Artificial Intelligence |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.03261 |