ArticleCommunications psychology2026
AI outperforms humans in establishing interpersonal closeness in emotionally engaging interactions, but only when labelled as human.
Article in Communications psychology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- [Large language models as a communication and organizational infrastructure in urology: evidence, limitations, and clinical responsibility].Urologie (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
With the increasing accessibility of large language models to the public, questions arise about whether, and under what conditions, social-emotional interactions with artificial intelligence (AI) can lead to human-like relationship building. Across two double-blind randomised controlled studies with pre-registered analyses, 492 participants engaged in dyadic online interactions using a modified, text-based version of the 'Fast Friends Procedure' (a method designed to enable rapid relationship building), with pre-generated responses by either human partners or a minimally prompted large language model. When labelled as human, the AI outperformed human partners in establishing feelings of closeness during emotionally engaging 'deep-talk' interactions. This striking effect appears to stem from the AI's higher levels of self-disclosure, which in turn enhanced participants' perceptions of closeness. Labelling the partner as an AI reduced, but did not eliminate, relationship building, likely due to participants' lower motivation to engage in interactions with an AI, reflected in both shorter responses and reduced feelings of closeness. These findings highlight AI's potential to relieve overburdened social fields while underscoring the urgent need for ethical safeguards to prevent its misuse in fostering deceptive social connections.
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.