Assessing and alleviating state anxiety in large language models

2025/03/03 by Ziv Ben‐Zion, Kristin Witte, Akshay K. Jagadish +8 · 1 voice · 2 citations
Psychology · Neuroscience · #Digital Mental Health Interventions #Emotion and Mood Recognition #EEG and Brain-Computer Interfaces

paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41746-025-01512-6

openalex publication_date 2025/03/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

The use of Large Language Models (LLMs) in mental health highlights the need to understand their responses to emotional content. Previous research shows that emotion-inducing prompts can elevate "anxiety" in LLMs, affecting behavior and amplifying biases. Here, we found that traumatic narratives increased Chat-GPT-4's reported anxiety while mindfulness-based exercises reduced it, though not to baseline. These findings suggest managing LLMs' "emotional states" can foster safer and more ethical human-AI interactions.

Citations

• Pre-train, Prompt, and Predict: A Systematic Survey of Prompting Methods in Natural Language Processing
• Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback
• DecodingTrust: A Comprehensive Assessment of Trustworthiness in GPT Models
• Gender bias and stereotypes in Large Language Models
• Large language models propagate race-based medicine
• Large language models show human-like content biases in transmission chain experiments
• Evaluating and Mitigating Discrimination in Language Model Decisions
• A Computational Framework for Behavioral Assessment of LLM Therapists
• Large Language Models in Mental Health Care: a Scoping Review

Cited by

• Inducing State Anxiety in LLM Agents Reproduces Human-Like Biases in Consumer Decision-Making
• Trustworthy AI Psychotherapy: Multi-Agent LLM Workflow for Counseling and Explainable Mental Disorder Diagnosis

Discussions

• Don’t Stress Your ChatGPT! 🤖💭 Turns out, large language models can experience “anxiety”. doi.org/10.1038/s417... Traumatic stories more than doubled its reported “anxiety” levels! #AI #ChatGPT [bsky, 1 points, 1 comments]

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