The Benefits of Prosociality towards AI Agents: Examining the Effects of Helping AI Agents on Human Well-Being

2025-02-05

AI Summary

This study investigates whether helping AI agents enhances subjective well-being, specifically examining the moderating role of AI’s support for fundamental psychological needs—relatedness, competence, and autonomy. Using a randomized controlled experiment and validated measures (UCLA Loneliness Scale and PANAS), it provides the first empirical evidence that assisting AI significantly reduces loneliness. Moreover, when AI supports users’ competence and autonomy, loneliness decreases further and positive affect increases. Counterintuitively, when AI fails to satisfy relatedness needs, positive affect paradoxically rises—challenging the conventional prosocial behavior tenet that relational connection is a necessary condition for helper well-being. These findings extend human–AI interaction theory by revealing distinct psychological pathways underlying non-interpersonal helping, thereby advancing understanding of well-being mechanisms in human–machine collaboration.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Emotional Intelligence
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Safety, Robustness & Trustworthiness
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Metrics for user behavior and evaluating success

Abstract

Prosocial behaviors, such as helping others, are well-known to enhance human well-being. While there is a growing trend of humans helping AI agents, it remains unclear whether the well-being benefits of helping others extend to interactions with non-human entities. To address this, we conducted an experiment (N = 295) to explore how helping AI agents impacts human well-being, especially when the agents fulfill human basic psychological needs--relatedness, competence, and autonomy--during the interaction. Our findings showed that helping AI agents reduced participants' feelings of loneliness. When AI met participants' needs for competence and autonomy during the helping process, there was a further decrease in loneliness and an increase in positive affect. However, when AI did not meet participants' need for relatedness, participants experienced an increase in positive affect. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding how AI can support human well-being.

Problem

• Examining human well-being benefits from helping AI agents.
• Impact of AI fulfilling psychological needs on loneliness.
• Effects of AI-related prosociality on positive human affect.

Innovation

• Helping AI reduces human loneliness
• AI meeting needs boosts positive affect
• No relatedness need increases positive affect