People choose to receive human empathy despite rating AI empathy higher
Joshua D Wenger; C. Daryl Cameron; Michael Inzlicht · 2026 · Communications Psychology
WASTE classifies this as Negative / Null Result Report · AI classification, approximate
The study found no significant effect — useful as a negative control or null benchmark for your own design.
Abstract
Recent advances in AI have enabled large language models to produce expressions that seem empathetic to human users, raising scientific and ethical questions about how people perceive and choose between human and AI sources of emotional support. Although an increasing number of studies have examined how people rate empathy generated by AI, little to no work has examined whether people would choose to receive empathy from AI. We conducted four studies investigating whether people prefer to receive empathetic expressions from humans or AI, and how they evaluate these expressions. Across diverse
Abstract by Joshua D Wenger; C. Daryl Cameron; Michael Inzlicht, Communications Psychology (2026) — licensed CC BY 4.0.
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Metadata source: OpenAlex · DOI 10.1038/s44271-025-00387-3