# The Benefits of Prosociality towards AI Agents: Examining the Effects of Helping AI Agents on Human Well-Being

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.02911 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02911/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 5 Feb 2025.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Mental Health Impacts of AI Companions: Triangulating Social Media Quasi-Experiments, User Perspectives, and Relational Theory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22505/) (2025)
- [CoBRA: Programming Cognitive Bias in Social Agents Using Classic Social Science Experiments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13588/) (2025)
- [Exploring the Effects of Chatbot Anthropomorphism and Human Empathy on Human Prosocial Behavior Toward Chatbots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.20748/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Prosocial behaviors, such as helping others, are well-known to enhance human well-being. While there is a growing trend of humans helping AI agents, it remains unclear whether the well-being benefits of helping others extend to interactions with non-human entities. To address this, we conducted an experiment (N = 295) to explore how helping AI agents impacts human well-being, especially when the agents fulfill human basic psychological needs--relatedness, competence, and autonomy--during the interaction. Our findings showed that helping AI agents reduced participants' feelings of loneliness. When AI met participants' needs for competence and autonomy during the helping process, there was a further decrease in loneliness and an increase in positive affect. However, when AI did not meet participants' need for relatedness, participants experienced an increase in positive affect. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding how AI can support human well-being.