mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Large Language Models Produce Responses Perceived to be Empathic

arXiv 2403.18148 ↗First posted 26 Mar 2024cs.CL cs.AIcited by 36

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Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated surprising performance on many tasks, including writing supportive messages that display empathy. Here, we had these models generate empathic messages in response to posts describing common life experiences, such as workplace situations, parenting, relationships, and other anxiety- and anger-eliciting situations. Across two studies (N=192, 202), we showed human raters a variety of responses written by several models (GPT4 Turbo, Llama2, and Mistral), and had people rate these responses on how empathic they seemed to be. We found that LLM-generated responses were consistently rated as more empathic than human-written responses. Linguistic analyses also show that these models write in distinct, predictable ``styles", in terms of their use of punctuation, emojis, and certain words. These results highlight the potential of using LLMs to enhance human peer support in contexts where empathy is important.

Key facts. Cited by 36 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 15 of its 51 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 26 Mar 2024.

Builds on

15 of 51 references.

References · 15

  1. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,199
  2. 2023Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Modelscited by 12,865
  3. 2019The Curious Case of Neural Text Degenerationcited by 2,881
  4. 2023Whose Opinions Do Language Models Reflect?cited by 759
  5. 2020GoEmotions: A Dataset of Fine-Grained Emotionscited by 479
  6. 2023A Long Way to Go: Investigating Length Correlations in RLHFcited by 285
  7. 2020A Computational Approach to Understanding Empathy Expressed in Text-Based Mental Health Supportcited by 182
  8. 2018The Design and Implementation of XiaoIce, an Empathetic Social Chatbotcited by 172
  9. 2024Towards Conversational Diagnostic AIcited by 79
  10. 2023Cognitive Reframing of Negative Thoughts through Human-Language Model Interactioncited by 77
  11. 2021Not All Negatives are Equal: Label-Aware Contrastive Loss for Fine-grained Text Classificationcited by 43
  12. 2023Fine-grained Affective Processing Capabilities Emerging from Large Language Modelscited by 24
3 more
  1. 2020Measuring Emotions in the COVID-19 Real World Worry Datasetcited by 15
  2. 2023Evaluating Subjective Cognitive Appraisals of Emotions from Large Language Modelscited by 12
  3. 2021Using Knowledge-Embedded Attention to Augment Pre-trained Language Models for Fine-Grained Emotion Recognitioncited by 10

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 10; 2025: 13; 2026: 13.

36 papers.

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  1. 2025Expressing stigma and inappropriate responses prevents LLMs from safely replacing mental health providerscited by 67
  2. 2025MentalChat16K: A Benchmark Dataset for Conversational Mental Health Assistancecited by 38
  3. 2025When Large Language Models are Reliable for Judging Empathic Communicationcited by 21
  4. 2024Are Large Language Models More Empathetic than Humans?cited by 18
  5. 2024Virtual Agents for Alcohol Use Counseling: Exploring LLM-Powered Motivational Interviewingcited by 17
  6. 2024Large Language Models are Capable of Offering Cognitive Reappraisal, if Guidedcited by 13
  7. 2024Human-like Affective Cognition in Foundation Modelscited by 13
  8. 2024The Illusion of Empathy: How AI Chatbots Shape Conversation Perceptioncited by 12
  9. 2026HEART: A Unified Benchmark for Assessing Humans and LLMs in Emotional Support Dialoguecited by 12
  10. 2024Recent Advancement of Emotion Cognition in Large Language Modelscited by 9
  11. 2025SENSE-7: Taxonomy and Dataset for Measuring User Perceptions of Empathy in Sustained Human-AI Conversationscited by 8
  12. 2024Script-Strategy Aligned Generation: Aligning LLMs with Expert-Crafted Dialogue Scripts and Therapeutic Strategies for Psychotherapycited by 7
24 more
  1. 2025Harmful Traits of AI Companionscited by 6
  2. 2024GPT-ology, Computational Models, Silicon Sampling: How should we think about LLMs in Cognitive Science?cited by 5
  3. 2024Empathic Grounding: Explorations using Multimodal Interaction and Large Language Models with Conversational Agentscited by 5
  4. 2024Enhancing Mental Health Support through Human-AI Collaboration: Toward Secure and Empathetic AI-enabled chatbotscited by 5
  5. 2025ASTRID -- An Automated and Scalable TRIaD for the Evaluation of RAG-based Clinical Question Answering Systemscited by 4
  6. 2025Enhancing Conversational Agents with Theory of Mind: Aligning Beliefs, Desires, and Intentions for Human-Like Interactioncited by 3
  7. 2025RedditESS: A Mental Health Social Support Interaction Dataset -- Understanding Effective Social Support to Refine AI-Driven Support Toolscited by 3
  8. 2025Being Kind Isn't Always Being Safe: Diagnosing Affective Hallucination in LLMscited by 3
  9. 2026Assessing Risks of Large Language Models in Mental Health Support: A Framework for Automated Clinical AI Red Teamingcited by 3
  10. 2026AI generates well-liked but templatic empathic responsescited by 3
  11. 2025How LLMs Fail to Support Fact-Checkingcited by 2
  12. 2026Auditing Support Strategies in LLMs through Grounded Multi-Turn Social Simulationcited by 2
  13. 2026If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires IIcited by 2
  14. 2025From Measurement to Expertise: Empathetic Expert Adapters for Context-Based Empathy in Conversational AI Agentscited by 1
  15. 2026Discourse Diversity in Multi-Turn Empathic Dialoguecited by 1
  16. 2025Bridging Cognition and Emotion: Empathy-Driven Multimodal Misinformation Detectioncited by 0
  17. 2025Context-Aware Detection and Victim-Centered Response Generation for Online Harassment in Private Messagingcited by 0
  18. 2026RE-LLM: Refining Empathetic Speech-LLM Responses by Integrating Emotion Nuancecited by 0
  19. 2026Empathy Is Not What Changed: Clinical Assessment of Psychological Safety Across GPT Model Generationscited by 0
  20. 2026LLMs Should Incorporate Explicit Mechanisms for Human Empathycited by 0
  21. 2026When Helpfulness Becomes Sycophancy: Sycophancy is a Boundary Failure Between Social Alignment and Epistemic Integrity in Large Language Modelscited by 0
  22. 2026Examining Human-Like Behaviors in LLMs: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of Model Behaviors, User Factors, and System Promptscited by 0
  23. 2026Empathy Is Steerable but Multi-Axial: Mechanism Geometry and Persona Effects in LLMscited by 0
  24. 2026Disrupted Companionship: A Risk Assessment Framework and Cross-Platform Quantitative Analysis of Psychosocial Responses to AI Companion Disruptionscited by 0