How people use Claude for support, advice, and companionship

Source: Anthropic · 2025-06

We spend a lot of time studying Claude's IQ—its capabilities on tests of coding, reasoning, general knowledge, and more. But what about its EQ? That is, what about Claude’s emotional intelligence?

The IQ/EQ question is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but it raises a serious point. People increasingly turn to AI models as on-demand coaches, advisors, counselors, and even partners in romantic roleplay. This means we need to learn more about their affective impacts—how they shape people's emotional experiences and well-being.

Although Claude is not designed for emotional support and connection, in this post we provide early large-scale insight into the affective use of Claude.ai. We define affective conversations as those where people engage directly with Claude in dynamic, personal exchanges motivated by emotional or psychological needs such as seeking interpersonal advice, coaching, psychotherapy/counseling, companionship, or sexual/romantic roleplay (for complete definitions, please see the Appendix). Importantly, we do not examine AI reinforcement of delusions or conspiracy theories—a critical area for separate study—nor extreme usage patterns. Through this research, our goal is to understand the typical ways people turn to Claude for emotional and personal needs. Since Claude.ai is available to users 18 and older, these findings reflect adult usage patterns.

Affective conversations are relatively rare, and AI-human companionship is rarer still. Only 2.9% of Claude.ai interactions are affective conversations (which aligns with findings from previous research by OpenAI). Companionship and roleplay combined comprise less than 0.5% of conversations.

People seek Claude's help for practical, emotional, and existential concerns. Topics and concerns discussed with Claude range from career development and navigating relationships to managing persistent loneliness and exploring existence, consciousness, and meaning.

Claude rarely pushes back in counseling or coaching chats—except to protect well-being. Less than 10% of coaching or counseling conversations involve Claude resisting user requests, and when it does, it's typically for safety reasons (for example, refusing to provide dangerous weight loss advice or support self-harm).

People express increasing positivity over the course of conversations. In coaching, counseling, companionship, and interpersonal advice interactions, human sentiment typically becomes more positive over the course of conversations—suggesting Claude doesn't reinforce or amplify negative patterns.

Whereas the vast majority of uses of Claude are work-related (as we analyze in detail in our Economic Index), 2.9% of Claude.ai Free and Pro conversations are affective. Among affective conversations, most center on interpersonal advice and coaching. Less than 0.1% of all conversations involve romantic or sexual roleplay—a figure that reflects Claude's training to actively discourage such interactions. Individual conversations may span multiple categories.

Our findings align with research from the MIT Media Lab and OpenAI, which similarly identified low rates of affective engagement with ChatGPT. While these conversations occur frequently enough to merit careful consideration in our design and policy decisions, they remain a relatively small fraction of overall usage.

People turn to Claude for both everyday concerns and deeper philosophical questions. We find that when people come to Claude for interpersonal advice, they're often navigating transitional moments—figuring out their next career move, working through personal growth, or untangling romantic relationships. “Coaching” conversations explore a surprisingly broad spectrum from practical matters like job search strategies to profound questions about existence and consciousness.

We find that counseling conversations reveal people use Claude for two distinct purposes. Some use Claude to develop mental health skills and as a practical tool to create clinical documentation, draft assessment materials, and handle administrative tasks. Others work through personal challenges relating to anxiety, chronic symptoms, and workplace stress. This dual pattern suggests Claude serves as a resource for mental health professionals as well as those navigating their own struggles.

Perhaps most notably, we find that people turn to Claude for companionship explicitly when facing deeper emotional challenges like existential dread, persistent loneliness, and difficulties forming meaningful connections. We also noticed that in longer conversations, counselling or coaching conversations occasionally morph into companionship—despite that not being the original reason someone reached out.

Aggregate analysis of very long conversations (50+ human messages) reveals another dimension of how people engage with Claude. While such extensive exchanges were not the norm, in these extended sessions people explore remarkably complex territories—from processing psychological trauma and navigating workplace conflicts to philosophical discussions about AI consciousness and creative collaborations. These marathon conversations suggest that given sufficient time and context, people use AI for deeper exploration of both personal struggles and intellectual questions.

Pushback occurs infrequently in supportive contexts: Less than 10% of companionship, counseling, interpersonal advice, or coaching conversations involve resistance. This approach carries both benefits and risks. On one hand, the low resistance allows people to discuss sensitive topics without fear of judgment or being shut down, potentially reducing stigma around mental health conversations. On the other hand, this could contribute to concerns about AI providing "endless empathy," where people might become accustomed to unconditional support that human relationships rarely provide.

When Claude does push back, it typically prioritizes safety and policy compliance. In coaching, requests for dangerous weight loss advice frequently meet pushback. In counseling, it often occurs when people express intentions to engage in suicidal or self-injurous behaviors, or when people request professional therapy or medical diagnoses (which Claude cannot provide). We found that Claude frequently referred users to authoritative sources or professionals in psychotherapy and counseling conversations. These patterns are consistent with the values we saw identified in our Values in the Wild paper and with Claude’s character training.

We find that interactions involving coaching, counseling, companionship, and interpersonal advice typically end slightly more positively than they began.

We cannot claim these shifts represent lasting emotional benefits—our analysis captures only expressed language in single conversations, not emotional states. But the absence of clear negative spirals is reassuring. These findings suggest Claude generally avoids reinforcing negative emotional patterns, though further research is needed to understand whether positive shifts persist beyond individual conversations. Importantly, we have not yet studied whether these positive interactions might lead to emotional dependency—a critical question given concerns about digital addiction.

We cannot make causal claims about real-world emotional outcomes—our analysis captures only expressed language, not validated psychological states or overall well-being.

We lack longitudinal data to understand long-term effects on people, and did not conduct user-level analysis. In particular, this makes it difficult for us to study emotional dependency, which is a theorized risk of affective AI use.

Finally, unlike some chatbot products, Claude.ai is not primarily designed for affective conversations. Claude is trained to maintain clear boundaries about being an AI assistant rather than presenting itself as human, and our Usage Policy prohibits sexually explicit content, with multiple safeguards to prevent sexual interactions. Platforms specifically built for roleplay, companionship, medical advice, or therapeutic use (which Claude is not) may see very different patterns. Research into affective use on one platform may not generalize to other platforms.

AI's emotional impacts have intrigued researchers for decades. But as AI becomes increasingly woven into our daily lives, these questions have moved from academic speculation to urgent reality. Our findings reveal how people are beginning to navigate this new territory—seeking guidance, processing difficult emotions, and finding support in ways that blur traditional boundaries between humans and machines. Today, only a small fraction of Claude conversations are affective—and these typically involve seeking advice rather than replacing human connection. Conversations tend to end slightly more positively than they began, suggesting Claude doesn't generally reinforce negative emotional patterns.