Rose Rimler

Questions like, did it feel like the bot could put itself in their shoes?

And so when they put all this together, they found that the empathy part made the biggest difference for people's loneliness.

And Julian interprets that to mean that this works because the chatbot makes people feel heard.

Don't you need a human being to feel heard?

So he's kind of like, even though you know you're not talking to a human, if its responses are human enough and if it makes you feel like it's really listening and sort of understanding and internalizing the things that you're saying, like that can be helpful to people.

Yeah.

I mean, other researchers actually have found something similar.

There was a study where the researchers had people chat online to either a chatbot or a human online.

And they asked them to talk about something that was emotional, to disclose some emotional stuff, which can have some benefits to you, like the catharsis of discussing something emotional.

And then they measured to see, did they get the same benefits talking to, just having that kind of emotional conversation with the chatbot?

They knew it was a chatbot versus a human.

They knew it was a human.

And they found it was pretty much the same.

It was equally beneficial.

Okay.

So there's something to this illusion thing, right?

Like we know it's a magic trick, but it still looks like the page is moving, you know, to use Julian's metaphor.

OK, so if they're like pulling the right levers, I can see how that would make you feel better.

And I think that's for some people in particular, this illusion might be more powerful than for other people.

So another study I want to tell you about is actually pretty shocking.