Internal 2026 Fellow Catalina Toma was recently recognized by the College of Letters & Sciences for her new research exploring how AI chatbots influence loneliness. Dr. Toma’s study, conducted with graduate student Jinyoung Choi, suggests that the emotions expressed by young adults are mirrored and amplified by the responses offered by the chatbots they use.

Check out an excerpt from the article, written by Aaron R. Conklin:

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Toma and Choi started by exploring the possibility that conversations with chatbots could reduce or alleviate loneliness among young adults, and why and how that might happen. They pre-screened a set of around 100 self-identified, lonely college students and asked them to have a conversation with Replika, a popular downloadable AI chatbot, once a day for a week.

They instructed their participants to have emotionally meaningful conversations — identifying their most significant emotional moment of each day as opposed to asking the chatbot for, say, popular restaurant recommendations. Some participants were instructed to talk about positive events while others focused on negative events. A questionnaire gauged participants’ emotions immediately after the conversation with AI took place. Additionally, researchers captured participants’ loneliness before and after completing the study. “We didn’t think just any conversation would be meaningful in terms of reducing loneliness,” explains Toma.

Toma and Choi worked from a theory of social psychology called broaden-and-build — the notion that when we experience a positive emotion, we’re more open to experiences and opportunities to connect. Conversely, negative emotions tend to turn individuals inward and make them retreat from social contact.

“What we found was that there was an incremental reduction in loneliness over the course of a week,” says Toma. “But what really mattered was how the conversations unfolded.”

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Congratulations on your research and well-deserved recognition, Dr. Toma!