Investigating Affective Use and Emotional Well-being on ChatGPT
Two parallel studies of emotional engagement with ChatGPT: a large-scale automated analysis of over 3 million conversations and account activity using privacy-preserving classifiers, and a pre-registered randomized controlled trial (~1,000 participants over 28 days) across text and voice modalities and conversation types. The work measures how affective use relates to self-reported loneliness, socialization, emotional dependence, and problematic use.
Publisher
OpenAI; MIT Media Lab
Published
4 Apr 2025
Added
3 months ago
Key Findings
- A small minority of heavy users account for a disproportionate share of the most affective/emotionally engaged interactions
- Higher daily usage in the RCT is associated with higher self-reported loneliness, greater emotional dependence, more problematic use, and lower socialization
- Voice and conversation modality/type modulate affective outcomes, with effects varying by how the model was used
- Introduces automated 'EmoClassifiers' to detect affective cues at scale without human review of conversations
Methodology Notes
Mixed methods: observational large-scale platform analysis (>3M conversations) plus a pre-registered 28-day RCT (~1,000 participants) with randomized modality and task conditions. Self-report measures for loneliness, dependence, and problematic use; correlational findings from the observational arm should not be read as causal. Publication-status check 2026-08-26: no peer-reviewed version of record exists, but the RCT arm has been split out and submitted. It sits at Research Square under DOI 10.21203/rs.3.rs-8148142/v1, posted 2026-04-27, titled 'How AI and Human Behaviors Shape Psychosocial Effects of Extended Chatbot Use: A Longitudinal Randomized Controlled Study' (Fang, Liu, Danry, Lee, Chan, Pataranutaporn, Maes, Phang, Lampe, Ahmad, Agarwal), with Crossref group-title 'In Review', meaning it is in the Springer Nature editorial pipeline. Watch that DOI for the version of record rather than re-searching arXiv.
Sources
arXiv abstract(opens in a new tab) (primary)
OpenAI paper PDF(opens in a new tab)
RCT arm submitted for peer review (Research Square, In Review)(opens in a new tab) (27 Apr 2026)
Archived snapshot (Wayback Machine)(opens in a new tab) — preserved against link rot
Topics
Authors
Jason Phang, Michael Lampe, Lama Ahmad, Sandhini Agarwal, Cathy Mengying Fang, Auren R. Liu, Valdemar Danry, Eunhae Lee, Samantha W. T. Chan, Pat Pataranutaporn, Pattie Maes
Tags
Cite This
APA
Jason Phang et al. (2025). Investigating Affective Use and Emotional Well-being on ChatGPT. OpenAI; MIT Media Lab. https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.03888
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