An Empathetic AI for Mental Health Intervention: Conceptualizing and Examining Artificial Empathy

The ability to express empathy is recognized as a key factor for non-human agents to provide effective support and companionship. However, the conceptualization of empathy goes against their non-human nature, as it is grounded in unique human experiences. Therefore, the question remains: can humans accept non-human agents expressing empathy, and if so, how? In a laboratory experiment, 123 participants engaged in a Zoom-based counseling process with either an AI-driven or a human-operated counselor who expressed high or low empathy during empathetic counseling to address individual stressors. The results suggest that overall, empathetic counseling increased counseling quality only when it came from a human-operated counselor. AI-provided empathetic counseling backfired and was rated as less helpful. As we further examine different aspects of empathy, we found that perceiving two sub-dimensions of empathetic support from AI predicted better counseling quality: offering attentive comments and providing hope. This study concludes that it is necessary to reconsider the non-human nature of AI and conceptualize artificial empathy accordingly.