{"paper":{"title":"AI emotional support is better only when chosen, but shifts preferences even when it is not","arxiv_id":"2608.23196","primary_cat":"cs.AI","submitted_at":"2026-08-24T12:47:09+00:00","version_compiled":"v1"},"notice":"Every quoted sentence is the authors' text from the arXiv listing abstract. Labels and probabilities are the outputs of classifier-1.13.0 on the question bank abstract-p1-20260923, exactly as returned. 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humans'.","hedge":{"p":1.0,"label":"asserted"},"own_p":0.03,"main_claim_p":0.03,"quantitative":true,"quantitative_p":0.92,"role_probabilities":{"gap":0.0,"method":0.0,"result":0.0,"background":1.0,"limitation":0.0,"future_work":0.0,"contribution":0.0,"interpretation":0.0}},{"i":2,"p":0.96,"id":"s2","own":false,"role":"gap","text":"But these studies either assigned the support source or honored people's choice.","hedge":{"p":0.99,"label":"asserted"},"own_p":0.06,"main_claim_p":0.02,"quantitative":false,"quantitative_p":0.18,"role_probabilities":{"gap":0.96,"method":0.0,"result":0.0,"background":0.04,"limitation":0.0,"future_work":0.0,"contribution":0.0,"interpretation":0.0}},{"i":3,"p":0.72,"id":"s3","own":false,"role":"gap","text":"In real life, support is often incongruent with choice, as people want one source and receive the other.","hedge":{"p":0.94,"label":"asserted"},"own_p":0.08,"main_claim_p":0.05,"quantitative":false,"quantitative_p":0.08,"role_probabilities":{"gap":0.72,"method":0.0,"result":0.0,"background":0.28,"limitation":0.0,"future_work":0.0,"contribution":0.0,"interpretation":0.0}},{"i":4,"p":0.97,"id":"s4","own":true,"role":"method","text":"Across three experiments (N = 1,951), participants chose whether to share an emotional experience with a human or an AI, then were randomly assigned to a congruent or incongruent partner.","hedge":{"p":0.98,"label":"asserted"},"own_p":0.95,"main_claim_p":0.04,"quantitative":true,"quantitative_p":0.95,"role_probabilities":{"gap":0.0,"method":0.97,"result":0.0,"background":0.0,"limitation":0.0,"future_work":0.0,"contribution":0.03,"interpretation":0.0}},{"i":5,"p":1.0,"id":"s5","own":true,"role":"result","text":"AI support was rated as superior only among those who had chosen it.","hedge":{"p":1.0,"label":"asserted"},"own_p":0.92,"main_claim_p":0.28,"quantitative":true,"quantitative_p":0.88,"role_probabilities":{"gap":0.0,"method":0.0,"result":1.0,"background":0.0,"limitation":0.0,"future_work":0.0,"contribution":0.0,"interpretation":0.0}},{"i":6,"p":1.0,"id":"s6","own":true,"role":"result","text":"Yet regardless of congruence, interacting with AI increased willingness to choose it again.","hedge":{"p":1.0,"label":"asserted"},"own_p":0.92,"main_claim_p":0.17,"quantitative":false,"quantitative_p":0.17,"role_probabilities":{"gap":0.0,"method":0.0,"result":1.0,"background":0.0,"limitation":0.0,"future_work":0.0,"contribution":0.0,"interpretation":0.0}},{"i":7,"p":0.93,"id":"s7","own":true,"role":"result","text":"In a 28-day study with OpenAI (N = 981), daily conversations shifted preferences toward AI and away from humans, but only when conversations turned 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