# SweetieChat: A Strategy-Enhanced Role-playing Framework for Diverse Scenarios Handling Emotional Support Agent

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.08389 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.08389/

## Key facts

- Cited by 24 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Social simulation and multi-agent debate, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 23 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Dec 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Social simulation and multi-agent debate](https://mlsanity.com/agents/social-simulation-and-multi-agent-debate/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [BERTScore: Evaluating Text Generation with BERT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.09675/) (2019)
- [Decoupled Weight Decay Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.05101/) (2017)
- [CAMEL: Communicative Agents for "Mind" Exploration of Large Language Model Society](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17760/) (2023)
- [A Diversity-Promoting Objective Function for Neural Conversation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.03055/) (2015)
- [Personalizing Dialogue Agents: I have a dog, do you have pets too?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07243/) (2018)
- [Towards Emotional Support Dialog Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01144/) (2021)
- [From Persona to Personalization: A Survey on Role-Playing Language Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18231/) (2024)
- [A Computational Approach to Understanding Empathy Expressed in Text-Based Mental Health Support](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.08441/) (2020)
- [Challenges in Building Intelligent Open-domain Dialog Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05709/) (2019)
- [Large Language Models are Superpositions of All Characters: Attaining Arbitrary Role-play via Self-Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12474/) (2024)
- [PsyQA: A Chinese Dataset for Generating Long Counseling Text for Mental Health Support](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01702/) (2021)
- [MISC: A MIxed Strategy-Aware Model Integrating COMET for Emotional Support Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13560/) (2022)
- [AugESC: Dialogue Augmentation with Large Language Models for Emotional Support Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.13047/) (2022)
- [Personalized Dialogue Generation with Diversified Traits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.09672/) (2019)
- [Control Globally, Understand Locally: A Global-to-Local Hierarchical Graph Network for Emotional Support Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.12749/) (2022)
- [Can Large Language Models be Good Emotional Supporter? Mitigating Preference Bias on Emotional Support Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13211/) (2024)
- [ESCoT: Towards Interpretable Emotional Support Dialogue Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10960/) (2024)
- [From Role-Play to Drama-Interaction: An LLM Solution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14231/) (2024)
- [Mitigating Unhelpfulness in Emotional Support Conversations with Multifaceted AI Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.05928/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [KokoroChat: A Japanese Psychological Counseling Dialogue Dataset Collected via Role-Playing by Trained Counselors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01357/) (2025)
- [From Generic Empathy to Personalized Emotional Support: A Self-Evolution Framework for User Preference Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.16610/) (2025)
- [Simulating Before Planning: Constructing Intrinsic User World Model for User-Tailored Dialogue Policy Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13643/) (2025)
- [Evaluating, Synthesizing, and Enhancing for Customer Support Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.04423/) (2025)
- [TheraMind: A Strategic and Adaptive Agent for Longitudinal Psychological Counseling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.25758/) (2025)
- [You Never Know a Person, You Only Know Their Defenses: Detecting Levels of Psychological Defense Mechanisms in Supportive Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15601/) (2025)
- [A Review of Incorporating Psychological Theories in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.00003/) (2025)
- [DecoupledESC: Enhancing Emotional Support Generation via Strategy-Response Decoupled Preference Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.16995/) (2025)
- [Tailored Emotional LLM-Supporter: Enhancing Cultural Sensitivity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07902/) (2025)
- [PsychEthicsBench: Evaluating Large Language Models Against Australian Mental Health Ethics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.03578/) (2026)
- [EmoHarbor: Evaluating Personalized Emotional Support by Simulating the User's Internal World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01530/) (2026)
- [Deriving Character Logic from Storyline as Codified Decision Trees](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10080/) (2026)
- [Toward Real-World Chinese Psychological Support Dialogues: CPsDD Dataset and a Co-Evolving Multi-Agent System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.07509/) (2025)
- [A Survey of Large Language Models in Discipline-specific Research: Challenges, Methods and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.08425/) (2025)
- [Listening to the Echo: User-Reaction Aware Policy Optimization via Scalar-Verbal Hybrid Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15434/) (2026)
- [ENPMR-Bench: Benchmarking Proactive Memory Retrieval for Emotional Support Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.27240/) (2026)
- [ESC-Skills: Discovering and Self-Evolving Skills for Emotional Support Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.27908/) (2026)
- [When Seekers Are Hard to Help: Evaluating Emotional Support Dialogue Systems in Worst-Case Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.28228/) (2026)
- [An Offline Mobile Conversational Agent for Mental Health Support: Learning from Emotional Dialogues and Psychological Texts with Student-Centered Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10580/) (2025)
- [Psych=eChat: An Empathic Framework Focused on Emotion Shift Tracking and Safety Risk Analysis in Psychological Counseling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12392/) (2026)
- [Modeling Multiple Support Strategies within a Single Turn for Emotional Support Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17972/) (2026)
- [BOOKMARKS: Efficient Active Storyline Memory for Role-playing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14169/) (2026)
- [Psy-Chronicle:A Structured Pipeline for Synthesizing Long-Horizon Campus Psychological Counseling Dialogues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.22140/) (2026)
- [From Pattern Recognizers to Personalized Companions: A Survey of Large Language Models in Mental Health](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.25186/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated promising potential in providing empathetic support during interactions. However, their responses often become verbose or overly formulaic, failing to adequately address the diverse emotional support needs of real-world scenarios. To tackle this challenge, we propose an innovative strategy-enhanced role-playing framework, designed to simulate authentic emotional support conversations. Specifically, our approach unfolds in two steps: (1) Strategy-Enhanced Role-Playing Interactions, which involve three pivotal roles -- Seeker, Strategy Counselor, and Supporter -- engaging in diverse scenarios to emulate real-world interactions and promote a broader range of dialogues; and (2) Emotional Support Agent Training, achieved through fine-tuning LLMs using our specially constructed dataset. Within this framework, we develop the ServeForEmo dataset, comprising an extensive collection of 3.7K+ multi-turn dialogues and 62.8K+ utterances. We further present SweetieChat, an emotional support agent capable of handling diverse open-domain scenarios. Extensive experiments and human evaluations confirm the framework's effectiveness in enhancing emotional support, highlighting its unique ability to provide more nuanced and tailored assistance.