collaborators

10 papers

cs.CL2026

AI generates well-liked but templatic empathic responses

Emma S. Gueorguieva, Hongli Zhan, Jina Suh +4

Recent research shows that greater numbers of people are turning to Large Language Models (LLMs) for emotional support, and that people rate LLM responses as more empathic than hum…

cs.CL2026

Discourse Diversity in Multi-Turn Empathic Dialogue

Hongli Zhan, Emma S. Gueorguieva, Javier Hernandez +3

Large language models (LLMs) produce responses rated as highly empathic in single-turn settings (Ayers et al., 2023; Lee et al., 2024), yet they are also known to be formulaic gene…

cs.CL2026

Verbalizing LLMs' assumptions to explain and control sycophancy

Myra Cheng, Isabel Sieh, Humishka Zope +7

LLMs can be socially sycophantic, affirming users when they ask questions like "am I in the wrong?" rather than providing genuine assessment. We hypothesize that this behavior aris…

cs.CL2026

Characterizing Delusional Spirals through Human-LLM Chat Logs

Jared Moore, Ashish Mehta, William Agnew +11

As large language models (LLMs) have proliferated, disturbing anecdotal reports of negative psychological effects, such as delusions, self-harm, and ``AI psychosis,'' have emerged…

cs.CL2026

HEART: A Unified Benchmark for Assessing Humans and LLMs in Emotional Support Dialogue

Laya Iyer, Kriti Aggarwal, Sanmi Koyejo +3

Supportive conversation depends on skills that go beyond language fluency, including reading emotions, adjusting tone, and navigating moments of resistance, frustration, or distres…

cs.CL2026

Human-like Affective Cognition in Foundation Models

Kanishk Gandhi, Zoe Lynch, Jan-Philipp Fränken +5

Understanding emotions is fundamental to human interaction and experience. Humans easily infer emotions from situations or facial expressions, situations from emotions, and do a va…